The last day was a shorter day, to return to the motorcycle rental shop by 3pm closing time. (COVID hours)
Anghiari, with a small castle straight out of a fairy tale.
After this, our final stop, Adrian’s bike wouldn’t start. He had just told me the story over coffee of his ordeal with two dead batteries in the spring. (The replacement had been sitting on a shop shelf for years so it was already nearly dead on arrival). After that coffee we returned to the bikes. The battery had plenty of power; the engine turned over just fine, but it didn’t catch. He heard online that this model has problems with the fuel pump and folks say to just wait. So we waited and tried again, still without success, until the battery was drained. In desperation before calling a tow truck, we tried to jump-start his bike from mine, and that worked. Was it just waiting a few more minutes while we fiddled with the cables? Was the battery full of charge but sagging on voltage so the engine electronics didn’t work? Dunno.
Back in Firenze I walked around to see the sights.
Inevitably, the Apple Store“Let’s not return to normality because the normality was the problem”
Today’s itinerary was Todi, Assisi, Gubbio, Cortona. Assisi was fine, but not being Catholic, St. Francis isn’t particularly relevant to me. I knew nothing about him except he was a monk, he was a saint, he founded the Franciscan order, and they named a Mission in Northern California after him.
Just as predicted by all the forecasts we could find, we had a little light rain at Gubbio. In the background is the Roman Theater.
Gubbio was actually quite nice, one of our favorites so far. We avoided most of the rain staying under covers and awnings like this, and wandered around the centro storico. We dodged the rain for the rest of the afternoon until our luck finally ran out at Cortona. The last ten minutes to the hotel it came down in buckets. The gear is drying out in the hotel rooms. Luckily there’s a restaurant at this hotel so we don’t need to ride any more tonight.
Today we rode through southern Tuscany, a little bit of Lazio, and into Umbria. We visited four towns built upon isolated hills, natural fortresses defended by with sheer walls of rock.
First was Pitigliano, where we slept last night. It’s surrounded by a forested river valley. It seemed a nice place, with a lovely panoramic walkway along the walls.
Second was Sorana. It was also surrounded by a river ravine. The river makes a big turn like an oxbow, leaving this island of rock sticking up like a mesa. The only ways up are narrow steep paths, easy to defend. Towns like these could be besieged but not directly attacked. Here is the wall of the Masso Leopoldino, an inner keep, looking down to the rooftops of the town, and the forested ravine beyond. The perspective may be tricky to see but from the trees at the edge of the town wall to the trees in the ravine is a long way down. Sorana was cuter, with a quiet historic center. There were visitors like us but only Italians. This isn’t a widely known place yet. It’s overshadowed by its more famous cousins that we visited next.
After Sorana we rode to Bagnoregio, which is a major attraction and was quite busy. We probably saw a thousand people during our hour and a half visit. I didn’t notice big organized tour groups but maybe I just didn’t notice.
Bagnoregio is built on a mesa of rock in the middle of a larger valley. The valley floor is mostly scrub and badlands, with some very small fields and orchards. The only approach to the city is via an extremely steep path, now a modern bridge. Impregnable, but a pain to live there. It’s a dramatic location and beautiful to look at (you’ll find many postcard photos online) but there’s no “town” left. There are 11 residents left.
The last was Orvieto. This is a well known city along the autostrada and a standard tour stop. The cathedral is beautiful and would belong in a city ten times the size. No pictures from Orvieto except lunch: umbrichelli al pesto, pachino tomatoes, and funghi.
In the evening we stayed in an agriturismo outside Todi, a bonus city-upon-a-hill, visible in the distance.
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First day. We escaped out from under the storms in Firenze with an autostrada sprint south past Siena. Through meandering roads and small towns we reached our Airbnb in Pitigliano.
Map to come in the future when I figure out how to map.
If you ride a motorcycle, you know what’s up. These are good roads: technical enough, quiet enough, beautiful scenery. We didn’t stop for many pictures and they never really capture the roads anyway.
If you don’t ride, I’m not able to explain it here and pictures would help either. But: it was great.
The cat keeps watch while we take a little nap before going into town.
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Italy seems to really like shower stalls with sliding corners. I don’t know why. Seems like the leakiest of all designs.
Update: like all good engineering conundrums, the answer came to me in the shower: These doors need zero extra space to open, conserving room in small bathrooms.
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First, an editorial note: I’m going to start posting out of order. I’m going to keep moving forward, with more small posts of the moment, like this one. When I have time I’ll also try to go back and fill in the things I’ve skipped with more detailed posts, and back-date them so they appear in the right place in time.
I’m in Firenze for a night. Tomorrow I depart on a 4 day motorcycle tour . The plan was to go to the Dolomites (eastern Italian Alps) and ride all the passes, but it’s going to rain this weekend and with the cold weather it’ll be no fun. Instead we’ll go south through Toscana and Umbria; at least it’ll be a warm rain.
I managed to negotiate the entire day without English. Ticket and green pass check on the train. Hotel check-in. Ordering dinner.
As for dinner. Carbonara al mare: in place of guanciale, frutti di mare. The wine is from Sardegna, that was all I caught.
Finally, food pics. I know what y’all are really here for!
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Last weekend I went to Castel Di Sangro with Chacha and Tom. Castel Di Sangro is a town in the Apennine Mountains.
This was my second trip on the highways of Italy. Chacha and Tom were a little late leaving their house so I had time to kill, so I took the scenic route through the mountains. Here are some snapshots from the drive. I took a few of just the road itself to try to catch the vibe. On the highway there’s always a town somewhere in sight, usually perched atop a hill.
I should figure out how to embed maps into this blog. Stay tuned.
The highways are very well maintained. The roads are in great shape. The speed limits don’t appear to be working: Nobody follows them and they are unreasonably low. When driving the limit I always felt like I was going 30% slower than I would be driving the limit on an equivalent stretch of road in the US. Sometimes in the middle of the highway for no reason that I can tell, the limit will suddenly drop to 50kmh (31mph) for a mile or so. If there are any uncontrolled intersections the limit might be 30kmh (18mph!), on a 2-lane rural road that in the US would still be running at 55mph. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter that the limits are so low because nobody slows down. In fact, when I tried to respect the limits, I only became a danger to others driving so unreasonably slowly, everyone including the trucks flew by me with an occasional honk.
Over the weekend, my allergies flared up. It started Thursday night with a little irritation in my nose. By Friday night my sinuses hurt and my nose was stuffed up so badly that I couldn’t breathe through it at all. Between the allergies, and the church bells basically right outside the AirBNB window, I had a really rough night’s sleep. On Saturday, the first order of business was to get some Zyrtec at the farmacia. By Sunday morning, I was feeling better but still not great. As I write this, it’s Tuesday, I’m taking Zyrtec daily, and my nose is still stuffy. I do get hay fever in the Bay Area every spring. I guess there’s some kind of pollen in Italy in the summer that triggers my allergies too.
Now that I’ve covered the worst part of last weekend, next post will be the best part: Hiking around Lago di Barrea
Today I went on my first ride in Italy, not a long one but the goal was just to get out there. It was lovely and cool in the morning.
I met some folks just about to head out from the bar on a training ride. They suggested some good routes for another day.
At the point I turned around, I can climb the road through Torrioni, which eventually loops back to Perillo (my neighborhood), but I didn’t want to try that today. They said it’s a 10km climb at 5% which is definitely something I can do but I’m still just getting comfortable on the new bike. So I turned back and went up the hill through Motta, a route I had driven the other day so I knew it went through without trouble.
La Dormiente del Sannio
In the last photo: “La Dormiente del Sannio”, the Sleeper of Samnium (Latin name for the region). See her profile in the far mountains? Her head is a little right of center. Her body extends to the left; the little cloud is about over her stomach. Her feet are at the far left, perhaps under a sheet. This isn’t a perfect viewpoint; seeing it in person the countours are strikingly visible, especially the head.
As of today, I live in Sant’Angelo a Cupolo, Benevento, Italy.
This morning we went to the Agenzia delle Entrate to register the lease for my apartment. That’s the Agency of Revenue, which collects taxes, enforces financial laws, and registers all real estate ownership and transactions. All sales and rentals of homes are registered with the government. In the US a rental is just a contract between two individuals; there’s no central registration at all. Overall the process was like a large DMV transaction, with less bulletproof glass and more literal rubber stamps on the papers and forms.
In the afternoon we went to the Municipio (town hall) of Sant’Angelo and filed the form for transfer of residence. This is another thing that is centrally registered in Italy, and not really at all in the US. Whenever you move, whether across town or across the country, you have to file a form at the town hall.
Now that I’ve registered my residency with the Municipio, I officially live here! This is now truly my apartment. I lease it and I live in it. Home is here, for up to 90 days while my visa lasts. Strange. And exciting.
Now the cadence changes drastically: The flurry of the first tranche of paperwork is finished. Now I wait to have my residence confirmed. An officer of the town police (in plain clothes) will stop by and make sure I’m here. They’re checking that I told the truth on the form, that there’s actually an apartment here, that I actually live in it, et cetera. That’ll happen within a few weeks (within a statutory limit of 45 days). Until then it’s just a waiting game. Just living. Here.
Probably that means the blog will get more interesting. I know I have been posting too many words and too few pictures. I haven’t been running at full capacity between travel, jet lag, culture shock, and working in a language I hardly know. All my attention and energy has gone into arriving here, surviving, and getting the paperwork done. And as a result, all I’ve been talking about is arriving here, surviving, and getting the paperwork done. I promise, I’ll take more pictures, I’ll tell you about the food, I’ll say more about the little differences of life here, I’ll give you more of the vibe of Italy as best I can.
Let me start to make it up to you, dear reader.
Here is tonight’s sunset over Taburno, photographed from my house.
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I am very tired. There are so many things I want to tell you.
Woke up. Walked to coffee and breakfast with Chacha and famiglia. Picked up the rental car, with a small adventure just to get to the rental desk. Drove an hour to Benevento and only missed one turn. Met Alessandro for lunch, then came to the house and signed the lease. Unpacked, started to settle in, went to the store to get some basics for the house, got home with a powerful hunger. Figured out how to order pizza with the JustEat app.
And finally got to sit down and enjoy some pizza (it doesn’t look that good in the photo but it was delicious), some wine, and the Napoli–Benevento game on TV. (Not that I know anything about football. But being in Benevento I’ve got to support the local team)
(Update: The photo doesn’t look right – it’s stretched out too tall. Which probably makes the pizza look even worse. Let me try to fix that. Update 2: Okay I think I got it. Let me know if the photos start looking like a fun-house mirror again.)
