As most of my readers know, the real point of this European adventure that we have undertaken is a month-long stay in an Italian town. When we first began planning this trip, we had thought we would live someplace for anywhere between four and six months. It became apparent that was probably not practical for a variety of reasons. Once we decided to have our long-term stay be a month, we thought we would stay in Lucca, which is roughly between Siena and Pisa. Upon doing some research, however, we elected instead to become residents of a community called Certaldo for that month. Certaldo is about halfway between Florence and Siena, and about 10 minutes from San Gimignano, the town noted for its many medieval towers.
While we are certainly enjoying our travels to date, we are both eager to begin our Certaldo adventure. It’s frankly been driving me crazy that Perugia is so close to Certaldo and I have wanted to see it so that I could know what to expect for the month of July. Bill agreed today to drive there and see what we could expect in a few weeks. How big was the town? How close is the nearest big town? How far out of Certaldo is our little house? Is it walking distance? How big is the market in Certaldo? All these were questions I was eager to have answered.
Let me start by saying that, as I mentioned yesterday, our GPS has a bit of a mind of her own. We asked her to take us on the fastest route, and so we took the toll road for 7/8ths of the way, and a terrifyingly narrow, winding road through a couple of really small towns for the final 8th. While I clutched my door handle as we went around curves on a road that should be one-way but instead is two-way with no way to see what’s around the corner, I kept thinking, how are my sister and her husband going to drive this road?
My sister and brother-in-law will be joining us in Certaldo for two of our four weeks in July. My fear was that they will not have had any chance to acclimate themselves to Italian drivers (and again, I can’t emphasize enough how crazy Italian drivers are) before they drive to Certaldo. Yikes!
I am so pleased to say that we are both thrilled with our choice. Certaldo is larger than either one of us expected, but it is still a small community. The city is divided into two sections, the new part (which is closest to our house) and what they call Certaldo Alto (the old section, which is up on a hill).
The first thing we did was drive out to our little house. I can’t even begin to tell you how beautiful it is. Our view is amazing. I promise I will spend every minute of my day sitting on my patio looking out into the hills, with the towers of San Gimignano in the distance. Well, until I go in to cook dinner, that is. Those of you who don’t like to cook can’t understand how much I miss cooking.
After we checked out our digs, we drove back into town to have lunch. (The house, by the way, is definitely walking distance into town. My fear, however, is that again it is a very winding road and there is not much room to walk on the side. I’ll have to see how much traffic there is.) We stopped at a restaurant that is just inside the town, very close to our house. We had a wonderful lunch of pasta and wine. The waiter couldn’t have been nicer, and when I told him I was trying to learn Italian, he helped me with pronunciation and choice of words.
At the end of the meal, he brought over a plate of homemade biscotti that were absolutely delicious. I still am trying to think what the flavor in the cookies was. Perhaps amaretto. Anyway, we enjoyed the cookies, and when we were finished, the woman who I think was either the owner or manager brought over a bottle of wine and said it’s their gift to us. I was astounded at their graciousness. Whereas in France, when you don’t know the language, they sniff, in Italy, they bring you a bottle of wine! Go figure. I told her as we were leaving that we would be living just a couple of miles from there for the month of July, and assured her she would see more of us.
We then took a funicular up to the top of the hill where the old city is located (after climbing hills yesterday, we were amused to see that they had a funicular. Weenies.)
The old town is very pretty, and you could see the entire area from there, including San Gimignano off in the distance. What I really like about it is that there are really very few tourists, as no one really knows about Certaldo yet. Don’t tell anyone.Back to the drive. Our GPS, for some reason, took us home an entirely different way, and it was a much easier drive. So, now that I’ve got my sister nervous about driving to Certaldo, I will assure her that provided they take the proper roads, they will be just fine.
No comments:
Post a Comment