The Trip to Italy. Siena

I love our family travel style. We don't believe in "bucket lists," and we're perfectly willing to change the itinerary if so moved, a philosophy that served us well on this holiday. We awoke on the second? third? morning in our cottage overlooking Lake Trasimeno, and the vote was for Siena. Sorry, Perugia, we'll catch you the next time. 

Tony and I spent a week in Tuscany in 2004 sans the children, who were having their own little holiday with the grandparents.  This time, rather than scurrying around snapping everything I "must" snap, we wandered at will along Il Campo while the children climbed the tower.

The city lends itself to wandering, even with the tourist crowds (perhaps because they're all distracted checking scenes off their bucket list). 

Italian paper stores are a weakness of mine. I enter. I shop. I buy.

The curved architecture was something we missed on the first visit.

Beautiful courtyards escaped my 35mm film camera, too, in 2004.

Siena's cathedral was supposed to be grander than the one in Florence. God (and The Plague) had other plans. On our first visit the cathedral was against a gray sky backdrop. Not this time!

The cathedral library.

The Baptistry.

St. Catherine of Assisi, the female patron saint of Italy, has her church in Siena.

Siena. So much prettier the second time around.

The Trip to Italy. Veni, Vidi, Assisi

OK. It was impossible not to be impressed as we approached Assisi.

Not so impressive, though, was the board directing us to the Basilica of St. Francis, patron saint of Italy.

These tiles, though pretty, were not the best navigational devices, either. 

And then, we reached the top of a hill.

Hoping for interior photos of the glorious upper and lower churches?  Sorry, no photos allowed, with the basilica being so heavily monitored to prevent event the most ninja-snap on an iPhone. Those of us with real cameras were followed closely, too.  How disappointing.   The commune of Assisi is quite photogenic, though, and we spent a fair amount of time wandering its streets before enjoying lunch in a main piazza. Enjoy the walk through Assisi with us...

Also home to Assisi is the Temple of Minerva, dating from the 1st century BC.

Assisi. A highlight of our time in Umbria.

Home!

Our "ski break" holiday ended a day early, not because we weren't enjoying the warm and sunny weather, though. The forecast for the mountainous areas through which we would return had changed, with calls for snow accumulations. Now, while I may own a snowy weather capable vehicle from a Scandinavian country that knows snow, that does not mean I want to actually drive in said snowy weather. Plus, there was the pesky business of addressing our failed boiler in the Vienna house, a matter that could not be addressed if we returned on Saturday.  And so, Parma and Modena will just have to wait for another time. 

For anyone cartographically inclined, the drive from Udine, Italy to Klagenfurt, Austria passes through the Alps and is generally miserable. Think winding roads, commercial trucks, Italian drivers and slow speeds, in good weather. Adding snow to that equation was not my idea of fahrvergnügen.  So we routed ourselves through the Dolomites and via Innsbruck, a much wiser decision.  

The house was a chilly 11°C when we arrived. Tony gave the boiler a quick look-see and determined that repairing the leaky valve might just help matters. And indeed, by morning the temperature was a tropical 17°C.  We still kept our required appointment with the "maintenance" person, who walked around our house for 90 minutes feeling the radiators and pronouncing, "alles gut."  Can't wait to see the invoice.

We awoke on Friday to snow! Beautiful, fluffy, snow!  This is the view looking up into the pine tree that sways fiercely in our garden with the winds. 

The chestnut tree on the other side of the garden and a view toward our garden from the path.

Running errands in the 22nd, I spied a gentleman feeding the local pigeons, and the snowplow tram. We don't have these novelties in DC.

With less than a month to go before Spring officially arrives, we thankfully haven't tired of winter yet. Besides, we leave in five weeks for Croatia, so what's a few more weeks of snow when we have more blue skies and warm temperatures to look forward to?

La Dotta and La Grassa

Bologna, nicknamed "The Learned" and "The Fat." The city definitely had a different feel than Florence and the hill towns. In the main piazza stands the Neptune sculpture, a curious emblem of the city given that Bologna is not a coastal town. The dolphin-riding lactating nereids from whose breasts water streams in the warmer months, commissioned by Bologna's Cardinal Legate to celebrate the election of his uncle as Pope Pius IV, gave us pause for consideration, as well.

Bologna, The Learned. The University of Bologna is the oldest university in Europe. Under the Napoleonic Era the university acquired space throughout the city for different topics of study; in the original structure is the anatomical theater for the medical school, considered the first seat of study in Europe. The palazzo housing the university was severely damaged in WWII, and the theater was rebuilt from pieces salvaged in the rubble. We were rather surprised that visitors could walk freely through the space, and even sit on the benches.  And there was no entrance fee to do so!

The dissecting table. 

Apollo on the ceiling of the theater.

The elaborate porticos of the university open to a courtyard, and through them we walked with hushed tones in the umber of three Popes (Innocent IX, Alexander IX, Gregory XV); Nicolas Copernicus (an assistant to Ferrara, an Italian astronomer), and the inventor Guglielmo Marconi.

Bologna is also noteworthy for its covered porticos throughout the city. They are all different, and given that the weather was overcast with occasional sprinkles, we could move about nicely protected from the elements.

Bologna, "The Fat," I'll save for a later discussion.  The task of putting pen to paper over my love affair with food and eating can not be undertaken lightly.