Finally!

Chiesa Santa Margherita (in Cortona)


Mmmm. Cheese.


Love the container for my quarto litro!

As in, finally I am updating my blog! I apologize to all you faithful readers out there for my blog sloth. And yes, I know I have faithful readers because a couple of you asked me when I would update! There are actually a bunch of blog-worthy things in my head, so I may end up jumping around out of chronological order. I apologize in advance if this ends up being a bit of a schizophrenic post...

The first thing is a short little anecdote from a week or two ago. Last week I was eating lunch at the "mensa" - cafeteria/dining hall, as I do on most Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. I pretty much always do the "linea classica" where you get bread, pasta, secondo (meat), contorno (salad or vegetable), yogurt or fruit, and water. Considering that they are feeding us en masse, the food is reasonably good, or at least I think so - and the amount you get for the price is unbelievable (2,80 euros which usually will buy you a sandwich if that). Anyway, on this particular day the result of my getting food made me chuckle. Bread... check, pasta, check... oh look, for a side there is either some not great looking vegetable, or french fries. Guess I will take french fries. Secondo? Oh, I thought there was some kind of meat, but it is either a frittata with vegetables (not appetizing looking), or hot dogs... hot dogs? Just sitting on the plate? Without a bun? Yup. Without much other choice, that is what I did. A banana to top it off, and there was lunch. I sat down at the table and just chuckled to myself - usually I end up with a typical Italian meal, but as I looked at my tray, what I saw was a slightly modified version of macaroni, french fries, and hot dogs. Oh well. (I ended up eating almost everything, but only one of the hot dogs...)
Another anecdote is from yesterday, still school related. After lunch, I went to the library for the section of the university where I am studying now. I needed to make some copies of articles in books to prepare for a paper/presentation I have due in May, so I filled out the little request form, since rather than having open stacks, we have to request books for the employees to get from the back. There was a woman sitting at the desk, so I gave her the sheet of paper and said I wanted to get this book to look at, she took the paper, and said "at 2." And I was like... at 2? And she nodded.... um, okay? So then I sort of awkwardly sat around for 10 minutes to wait. I guess it was getting toward the end of the lunch break and all the other employees had to come back, but it was just a little odd since she seemed to be sitting there... working. At first blush, the fact that I had to wait until 2 seemed so arbitrary. Oh, Italy.

Small happy thing: Today, I had lunch with Eva at her apartment. It was wonderful and really nice to spend an afternoon being so social! Also, sad as it sounds, I am always a fan of yummy free meals...

Now, I suppose it's time to share about my daytrip last Saturday to Cortona - aka home to Under the Tuscan Sun. The villa where Frances Mayes lives is near Cortona, but outside it a bit, so it isn't like I saw the actual house or anything. I had been feeling the need for a daytrip, and I am glad I did it.

Getting to Cortona was a little bit complicated, because I had to take the train to Camucia, a town near Cortona. It is in a valley - the Val di Chiana - and Cortona is perched on a hill overlooking it. The night before I left, while talking to Federico about my trip, I looked up the bus schedules from the Camucia station to Cortona, and it seemed like the 10:55 am bus would work perfectly for my 10:33 train arrival. I read that I could get tickets at the tabaccheria right near the station.

Well, I arrived, and the tabaccheria was closed. Then I went to look at the schedule, and the 10:55 bus wasn't listed under Saturday - only the weekdays - though the schedule online had said it ran every day but Sunday. Starting to worry a bit, I asked a woman at the stop where I could get tickets, and she told me to walk down the street a little to another tabaccheria - that worked. The woman had also said there was a stop on the street, which I did see, but just felt more secure going back to the station. At this point, it was about 10:50. I had visions of either spending too much for a taxi, or waiting until 12-something for the next bus! Ugh. But then, as I walked back to the station, I saw a bus! Score! I made it back to the station stop just ahead of the bus, climbed aboard, validated my ticket, and settled in for the short ride to Cortona. In the immortal words of Borat - great success! (And great relief.)

The first thing I wanted to do in Cortona was climb a hill to see the Chiesa di Santa Margherita and the Fortezza Medicea, from which there was supposed to be an extra spectacular view. Well, I wanted to see the things at the top, I am not sure I'd say I wanted to climb the hill, ha. I was overdressed, as the Italians tend to dress on the warmer side, and I ended up getting a little sticky during my walk. Also, I had deemed a water bottle too heavy to bring with my guidebook, umbrella, and other items, and didn't bring one, which I regretted during the walk. I could hear my wise fiance's voice in my head saying "Kate! Drink water! Hydrate!" And so on and so forth... Anyway it was a cool walk - there were shrines with mosaics all along the stone wall on the walk up to the church, and I realized at a certain point that they were the stations of the cross! With that in mind I could totally imagine town processions up the hill to the church. Pretty cool.

I got up to the church, and there was a tour bus with a group getting out. My thought to myself was "hey, they got up the easy way!" Ha. Anyway, I took some photos of the (very attractive) church, then went inside to photograph that as well. It was really neat - the most notable thing about it to me was Santa Margherita's coffin sitting on the altar! Crazy. After the church, I walked up a bit more to the Fortezza, stood next to it, and decided that I was too cheap to pay to get in. After a few more view photos, I headed back on down to the main town of Cortona.

My first stop was Piazza della Repubblica, which was alive with activity on that Saturday morning. Just beyond the piazza, in Piazza Signorelli, there was a market! Excellent. Eventually I found the food section, which is always my favorite section to ogle. I even took some photos of the large portions of cheese and produce, but not the whole squids, fish, and lots of meat. I know I was really obvious as a tourist taking photos, but it was worth it to me.

Past the market, there was Cortona's duomo. It has stayed in its medieval form, and therefore has an extremely simple stone facade, nothing fancy or extra added on later, as is the case with our duomo here in Florence. True to form as an Italian church, the duomo was also very pretty inside, with tons of art. (It's kind of sad, I write about this in almost a blase way now... I have just been blessed to see so many Italian churches!) After admiring the view from the wall next to the Duomo, I decided it was lunch time.

I headed to a place recommended by my trusty guidebook, which rarely fails me. Sure enough, Trattoria la Grotta was filled with good eats. I wanted to try a glass of the local Valdichiana white wine, but they didn't have it. Instead the waiter/owner recommended I have a quarto (quarter liter) of the local white wine, which he assured me was good. It was. I mean, let's be honest here, I just turned 21 and even after a couple years of wine drinking it isn't like I have a discriminating palette... I also really liked that the quarter liter came in a decorated pitcher thing, rather than a clear glass carafe - see the photo on Picasa!

Right off I knew the restaurant had the classic Italian trattoria feel that I love and will miss - the owner/waiter good naturedly chatting with the locals dining there, recommending pastas and antipasti and secondos and contornos to them, bringing wine, and so on and so forth. The trattoria was also in an old wine cellar, and as such had amazingly rustic stone walls inside. I was certainly a fan.

I opted to start with the crostini misti as an appetizer. There were some spicy tomato sauce crostini, some with mushrooms, and some with "meat" which I suspect was crostini toscani (fegato, pate that is actually good in my opinion). I have had a lot of crostini here in Italy, but I've got to tell you this was some of the best I've had. I made sure to savor every bite.

And the deliciousness didn't stop there - for my main course I got spinach and ricotta gnocchi with truffle sauce on top. This was the dish specifically recommended by my guidebook. The gnocchi actually had the ricotta and spinach incorporated inside them, and they were light and fluffy and airy, yet also creamy. The truffle sauce on top added a nice richness with the distinctive taste of truffles. And of course I doused the whole thing in a healthy sprinkling of parmigiano cheese. Excellent.

Soon enough, I finished my delicious meal and headed out. My next, and it turned out last, stop, was the Archeological museum in Cortona. One part of it held exhibits based on many archeological discoveries around Cortona - many of them from Etruscan settlements. In the rest of the museum, there were many other artifacts, including some Egyptian pieces, some more medieval pieces, a room dedicated to the futurist artist Severini, and a couple really neat globes. One was a decorated globe featuring all the constellations, and the other was a world map from 1714. It was really interesting to look at the proportions and land masses and see what they had right and what was a little off. The funniest thing was the "Island of California" floating in the Pacific just off the North American continent!

Toward the end of my museum visit, I noticed it was raining. Good thing I had packed my umbrella (yes, umbrella #5). Had it not been raining, I might have taken another hour or so to explore the rest of Cortona, but I'd accomplished all the tourist things I wanted to do and I didn't really want to wander around in the rain, so I went ahead and took the bus back down to Camucia. I had some more nice timing there, in that I didn't have to rush but I didn't have to wait long to get on the next train to Florence. So there you have it - my daytrip to Cortona!

So, as most of you probably know, a major news event happened in Italy recently - the terrible earthquake that caused so much damage and loss of life in and around L'Aquila, Italy. A lot of friends and family were concerned about any effect it may have had on me - but it was very small indeed. I did actually feel my bed shaking a little while I was on the computer before I went to bed, and after I realized that no one was shaking my bed, I was like oh I wonder if that is an earthquake... and then went to sleep and forgot about it. I only heard about the severity of the damage the next day. Also, I must have felt one of the related shocks - not the 3:30 am quake that damaged L'Aquila so badly. I think my host family might have woken up upstairs and felt that one, but I was sleeping and didn't wake up. It was nice to know people were concerned about me but it really affected me very little. And my host family's family friends in the area are fine, which is nice to know. Apparently the death toll is over 200 now, so I am clearly thinking of everyone in the area. And it does strike me in a different way to have felt some of the tremors, to be familiar with this country and society, and to see it on the news as a domestic event rather than an international one.

I think that update should suffice for now... I will try to be a bit better in the coming weeks! Speaking of the coming weeks, here is how they look -

Tomorrow I have a class, and then I will be on vacation from school for Easter, until April 20! Classes start again on April 16, but oh hey, no class for me on Thursdays and Fridays means no class again until the 20th. But lest you think that I will be lazing around doing nothing academic, I hope to make good progress on my reading and paper writing during this break. Weirdly enough, my end of semester deadlines will start in mid-May, and with visitors coming in late April and early May, not to mention Allie next weekend (!) I need to really concentrate so I am not stressed about school when I am playing tourist and tour guide! Since I have a lot of work and faraway deadlines, I think it is a good idea to create some artificial deadlines for myself... we'll see how that goes.

I started my third class of the semester today, it's Art History but imagery in Christianity. I think it is a good mix of being related to my major (comparative studies Western Europe and the Middle East, with a focus on religion) and to my current location, Florence, aka the art capital of the world. It is also with my same professor that I had for History of the Church, which really helps since she knows me and I know her and I understand her and her teaching style (I also happen to like her teaching style). I just hope that the reading for the class doesn't get overwhelming on top of what I have for the other two.

So in my immediate future, one day of class, hopefully some good studying days, Allie's visit to Florence (during which she'll spend time with me and with another friend), a whole week or so that hopefully is productive, some more class, and THEN I am off to Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento, the Amalfi Coast, and Capri with my future parents-in-law! I am so excited, both to see them and to go to such a lovely destination! I think it will be a blast. After that portion of their trip, they'll spend a few days here in Florence. And that brings us to the end of April, wow.

Okay time to conclude for real. Til next time!