from the hill towns

Tonight Craig and I are in Pitigliano, earlier today we were in Orvieto and in Civita di Bagnoregio. All of these are hill towns, great places to roam and discover. only problem is, that most of them are TOO discovered. Like Florence, the places that are truly beautiful like Siena, and Orvieto, that are close to airports and listed in Rick Steves, are kindof a travesty of real towns. the folks that lived there once cant afford it, and instead of real shops there are tourist shops selling expensive purses and fancy gourmet packaged foods and high toned ceramics.

But, we are happy to say, we have really had a great time in several towns today. Pitigliano, and earlier today the lakeside town called Bolsena, on the Lake Bolsena, and also, the NEW bagnoregio, have all been great towns with large medieval sections and great protected physical settings, but with REAl people living in them. tonight in Pitigliano, we saw plenty of happy tourists but they were all Italian, probably Roman, and we also saw lots and lots of old ladies, talkative old men, young teenagers all in purple which is either the fashion color, the color of the wine harvest or some obscure gang color, and young kids on scooters, bikes with training wheels or just running around. Hard to use training wheels, actually, on a stone pavement thats 500 years old... it is not so smooth.... cant quite get off them wheels...

we are in southern tuscany and earlier today we were in a different province I cant remember -- luvio perhaps.. and we woke up this morning in Umbria. we have just had two really nice nights staying at a house my sister has rented, in a somewhat remote feeling valley kind of southwest of cortona, northeast of perugia. This house was really a nicely built house, a solid stone farmhouse now with two levels, that was 5 kilometers up dirt roads from the nearest modern town and paved highway, but with lots of neighboring villages, old churches and restaurants that you could hike to... on the days they are open. The house is really in the woods, these might be overgrow hills, very high up on the side of a steep sided river valley. one side of the river valley is definitely umbria, parts of the north side are officially tuscany. it was very nice to spend two nights not hearing a car, truck or tourist word. And being able to hike right from the house, through woods and fields, watching tractors plowing, smelling fresh rolled hay bales, and walking up through grape vines with fresh fruit on them, and olive groves that make the nicest sound with wind blowing through them.

while we found the umbria house a great experience, today, when we drove south to orvieto on the freeway and then southeast on more rural roads to Bagnoregio, we were enchanged actually. We are really pleased with the new countryside look of south Umbria and south Tuscany. The soil is often brown, not big grey clods.There are still lots of hills but its very very gentle with vineyards and olive groves but also with pastures and streams and sheep and horses. in places it feels very lush. I had expected, I guess because all these small towns are described as being up on volcanic tufa, to be in some kind of desert. not at all. It often looks like the wall paintings or mosaics that ancient Romans would make, of their favorite country estate. Just like that.

TOnight, in Pitigliano, we are in a gorgeous stone town, lit up by the setting sun and now by artificial lights. It has lots of cool side streets where you could touch both walls if you stretched out your fingertips but our hotel is modern feeling and the locals are classy. Its true that old ladies still wear great multicolored print dresses and shawls and use canes, no trousers for most of them, but the modern italian world is a good one, most people have pretty high standards of living, education and a lot of them travel.

Bolsena was a really nice surprise... a modern town, but with a main shopping drag that dates back to Roman towns and so is just too, too narrow and twisty to really accomodate cars... so they go around. The shops were mostly closed both because it is midday, and perhaps there might be a wine festival somewhere... they might reopen at 5 ... but those that were open were nice, normal stores, no gucci bags, and there were happy normal sightseeing romans and local Bolsena teenagers hanging out under the enormous middle-ages stone arch.

Bagnoregio, the town outside Civita de Bagnoregio which is really a ghosttown high up on a rock, also looked like a very liveable town... lots of old enough buildings and courtyards framing these magnificent drop offs off the cliffs the hilltown is builton... but modernish streets and stores that sold real people stuff and lots of normal people of all ages walking around. no tourists. I think on a future trip it might be more fun to skip civita de bagno entirely and just stay a day or two in newer Bagnoregio!

In our travels today, the only downside today was the food.... where tourists congregate, you will get long waits and indifferent waiters... that was true in Civita de Bagnoregio, which we found to be very very beautiful, but the food we got was truly chintzy. too bad because our friend barbara had told us to expect very good. But tonight in Pitigliano, we had: a delicious plate of local cheeses of all ages with fresh honey, washed down with Pitigliano white wine; realy good salad with tasty white wine vinegar; and the roast lamb which was the house specialty, and Craig got to have more of the local wild boar

speaking of wild boar it does not seem to be endangered, while we stayed in Umbria we hiked and saw bejillions of little boar toe prints... my sister heard them at night rooting around in the compost.... and we saw shotgun shells all over apparently from successful hunters.

I guess we did not describe either the day we went from Siena, our first day with our rental car, through Montalcino over to my sisters rented place. I will say that Montalcino is another great little hill town, a little cutesy but felt more normal than most of the ones we have seen. And I will say, do NOT be talked into buying any cheaper brunello de Montalcino wines. Pay the high high prices, and be delighted. pay less, and they are NOT the same. oh well.