A Tale of Two Cities

Walking uphill just never seems to get any easier. But I guess if you don’t want to walk up hills, you don’t visit the hill towns of Tuscany. Today we visited two of the prettiest Tuscan towns – Cortona and Montepulciano. Both towns are on the very top of hills. Montepulciano is famous for its wine. Cortona was, as far as I know, a sleepy little hill town that few visited until a few years ago when a writer named Frances Mayes bought a house outside of Cortona, renovated it, and wrote a book about her efforts called Under the Tuscan Sun. Cortona has never been the same.

Today in Cortona we climbed our steepest sidewalk yet. I’m talking straight up a hill with few switchbacks. This, all because I wanted to see the tomb of St. Margaret – a saint I know absolutely nothing about. Let me just say if there is a dead saint, I’m on it like sauce on pasta.

Much to our consternation, when we finally reached the church at the top of the hill, it was locked up tight as can be. You think we would know by now that most churches in Italy lock their doors from noon until 3 o’clock – I guess so the parish priest can have his siesta (or his espresso coretto-espresso with a touch of grappa). Oh well. As we walked up the hill, we were able to listen to a virtual chorus of church bells chime the Angelus at noon. It was a lovely sound. And as we walked down the hill, which is much easier than walking up, we enjoyed the Stations of the Cross done in mosaic by the artist Severini.

My non-Catholic friends might wonder why we spend so much time visiting churches. When you are in Italy, that’s what you do. Every town has at least one church. If the town is of any size whatsoever, it will have anywhere from three to 10 churches. Cortona, for example, probably has seven or eight churches. Churches are where much of the art is displayed. It is not unusual, especially in Florence or Rome, to find a lesser-known Michelangelo or Donatello sculpture in an out-of-the-way church. Today we saw an absolutely gorgeous Annunciation painting done by Fra Angelico, a Catholic friar and painter in the early 1400s. He lived in Cortona from 1408 to 1418. I first saw his work in Florence and loved it immediately. In fact, we were looking at some of his work the first time we went to Florence when Bill decided to take a picture despite the No Flash Photography rule. He had no sooner shot the photo than a voice (presumably God’s) came from somewhere saying “NO FLASH.”

We had lunch in Cortona at a café that was owned, we learned, by an English ex-patriot. He married his Italian wife and they opened this restaurant. His wife spoke perfect English, and when I told her both of us wanted to learn Italian, she told me it had taken her nearly four years to learn to speak English. All I know is that she makes really good pesto.

Leaving Cortona, we drove to Montepulciano, also high on a hill. The first thing we did upon entering the gates of the city was go to a wine tasting and buy a bottle of Montiepulciano Vino Nobile. Yum.

It was lightly raining, but we did make it to the top of the town where the main piazza was cruelly located. It was a very pretty piazza, though the church was somewhat unremarkable. No dead saints, for example.

To get home, we instructed our GPS (whom we have named Giselle; it’s fairly alarming what you do when you have no one else to talk to except each other – we have actually projected human characteristics on our GPS so that we have one other friend, but that’s another blog) to take us home via the fastest route. When we tell her this, we have gotten some interesting routes. Today was no exception. She took us on the most beautiful drive ever, on the narrowest, twistiest road ever. The panoramic view was like a painting. You could see vineyards and olive groves and tiled roofs on pink stucco houses over the hazy hills. It was absolutely magnificent. I would murmur about how pretty it was, and just as Bill tried to take a look, a car would come racing around the corner on what was, for all intents and purposes, a one-lane road. Still, I think he was able to enjoy it as well.

We’re beginning to think of where we are going to spend our final week before we land in Rome on June 15. We have decided to splurge for part of it and are staying in the Cinque Terre area on the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of our favorite areas of Italy. We will be there for the first three days of next week. After that, we’re not yet certain.