Driving in Italy

We were worried that the driving might be hard having heard of the aggressive Italian drivers. They are aggressive but overall the driving has not been bad, you just have to get used to their style. On the freeway, more correctly “payway” since they are toll roads (but no toll house cookies — the toll [...]

Castles and Forts

Every walled town is essentially a fort. For higher security or a smaller investment they would build a castle, or castelina (small castle I think). The larger ones seem to be called roccas. We have seen a lot of all of these.
Many of these castles have large, cavernous rooms. I was reading the sign on [...]

More photos

Food:

More food:

Gone!

Easter cake

Snow on the drive through the mountains from Urbino to Siena:

We wear our best clothes to the laundromat because all the other clothes are dirty.

Electric candles in Lucca Duomo:

Hill Town Fatigue

There is a something very appealing about walled hill towns. There is nothing like your first hill town, for us it was Orvieto (on a previous trip). I have seen several hill towns described in travel books as the perfect hill town. You need to have walls, of course, complete if possible but few are. [...]

Lucca Brava

Charlie: We decided we didn’t want to go to Siena as originally planned (see previous post). We had heard good things about Lucca as an under-appreciated city to visit and there was a NY Times travel article about it. It turned out to be a good choice.
Lucca is fairly large, about 80,000, but the Old [...]

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I have always liked the Michelin green guides. One thing I like is they are not afraid to give an opinion. All sights are given 0, 1, 2 or 3 stars. Three stars is worth a journey to see and two stars is worth a side-trip to see. At least that is what it used [...]

Changing rooms

Charlie: in Urbino, the hotel had wifi but they said it only worked in the lobby and on the first floor. Being aesthetes and not in any way web junkies we opted for the third floor for the view, which was spectacular. It fired up the pc and it found the network at 58% (no [...]

Husband/Wife Oops

Wynette: I told Charlie with dead certainty when we first got here that husband in Italian is figlio and wife is figlia (pronounced fill-yo and fill-ya). So, we’ve been calling each other figlio/figlia and referring to each other to others that way. Frequently. (E.g., “Mi figlio has the hotel key upstairs.”) Well, [...]

Villa Cristina

Wynette: We decided not to stay in Siena after all. We did need to return our rental car in Siena so, the night before, we stayed in a little hill town, Castellina in Chianti, 20 kilometers north, at a bed and breakfast named Villa Cristina that we read about in Osterie & Locande [...]

Lotion on a train

Wynette: We took the train today from Siena to Lucca (actually 3 trains). On the second leg of the trip, the train was crowded and we squeezed into 2 free seats in a set of 6 where 4 young people were already sitting — they were probably early college age, 3 young women and a [...]

More on church candles

Wynette:  Charlie wrote a while back about electric candles in churches.  First we saw electric candles you put into a socket.  Then we saw electric candles with little switches.  Now, I want to report we saw electric candles that require nothing but a donation of a coin (any coin I think) and a random candle [...]

Coffee Branding

Charlie: Each coffee bar serves only one brand of coffee and the brand name is prominently displayed on the outside sign. Often the brand name is on the napkins and cups as well. We didn’t pay too much attention to coffee brands before since they all seemed equally good. Illy is one of the most [...]

Easter Morning

Charlie: we are in Urbino in Hotel Raffaello which has WiFi in the room so we can post more easily, and maybe get some more pictures up. We have a nice room on the top floor (the fourth, third in their terms) with amazing views of the city and countryside. The large church and bell [...]

Language

Charlie: I studied some Italian before I went but I have little facility with languages so I am very poor at Italian. I was waiting in the lobby for Wynette to come down for breakfast and they wanted to get my order. I wanted to say I was waiting for my wife but could not [...]

Fashion

Charlie: Italians are quite fashionable and almost always look good when they are out, at least the younger ones. They have this concepts of “la bella figura”, projecting a good image or something like that, when they go out. They seem to take a lot of care when they dress. The younger women are almost [...]

Three Star Hotels

Charlie: As you probably know, hotels are graded from one to five stars. We almost always stay in three-star hotels. When we were younger we were more tolerant of two-star hotels but now we expect certain things. There must be a check-list of things they must have, for example, they always have hair dryers whereas [...]

Restaurants

Charlie: Everywhere I have been in Italy before this, the restaurants (or osterias or trattorias, I never got the differences straight) all had menus displayed out front. In Spoleto we went to one that had a menu out front but when you get inside, no menus, they just tell you what is available. Anyway, we [...]

Churches and “Candles”

Charlie: Italy had a lot of churches. I suppose you probably knew that. But when you walk through these little hill towns and find four big churches in an area two blocks square you start to think they might have overbuilt a tad in the church department. It must have been a big drain on [...]

Window Coverups Exposed

Charlie: I grew up in a white house with green “shutters”. I use the quotes because they did not shut. They were decorative and attached to the outside wall, vertigial design elements reminding us of an older time in the US. Everyplace we have been in Italy have functional shutters that shut out the light [...]

Units (warning geeky)

Charlie:We rented a car in Spoleto, to drop off in Siena. We had a tiff with the rental agent who wanted to sell us insurance even thoough the insurance was included in the price we paid. The form said something like “collision damag waiver up to a deductible of ZERO (sic)” We interpreted this as [...]

Weather

Charlie: We had great weather the first few days, warm and sunny. We thought we had brought too many warm clothes. It turned gray yesterday, we got some rain today and we have rain predicted off and on for the next week. We might change our plans because being in the mountains in the rain [...]

Staying in a town a few days

Charlie: It always takes a day or two to get used to a town, to learn how to get around, to learn where you like to have coffee, to learn the prominent landmarks. Once you do that you feel a lot more confortable and the town is more fun. The learning process itself is fun [...]

Itinerary Revised

We have been changing things on the fly, especially since we got the car on 3/17 (to keep until 3/26).
3/13 to 3/18: Spoleto
3/18 to 3/19: visit to Norcia and Carralucca (?), stay in San Benedetto on the Adriatic side
3/19 ro 3/20: Cupra Marattima, another beach resort
3/20 to 3/22: Senigallia, a beach resort
3/22 to 3/25: Urbino
3/25 [...]

Water

Bottled water seems even more popular in Europe than in the US. There is some movement away from bottled water in the US for ecological reasons and more and more gourmet restaurants offer tap water instead. I wonder if that will happen in Europe too. Maybe they will lag a few years like they did [...]

Some photos

cafe in narni

hotel charlston in spoleto

outdoor cafe

wynette having a cappucino