Cortona

Yesterday morning my roommates, Kassie and Hannah, and I woke up to rush to catch the train to Cortona.  After some confusion about which train to take (it's not marked well), we managed to find the right one and hopped on.  Seventeen stops, yes seventeen, and two hours later we arrived in Camucia.  Cortona is basically a fortress city on a hill which makes arrival by train difficult to say the least.  So one takes the train to Camucia and buses up to the city of Cortona.  The road is basically a  winding "s" for three miles.  Very glad we chose the bus.

I stepped off the bus and right away by breath caught in my chest.  The view was so spectacular neither words or my amateur photography skills can capture it properly.  Everything was so lush and vivacious.  The olive trees and vineyards speckle the hills like little tombstones in a veritable garden of Eden. 

Toscana

I can see why Frances Meyer's lives heres...

We reluctantly ventured away from the view to find some lunch.  We had read in a local newspaper article to try Trattoria la Grotta.  (What can I say?  I'm a slave to the printed word).  It was a charming little restaurant tucked away in a nook between apartment buildings.  We sat outside in the afternoon sun to enjoy our delicious meal.  Everything we ordered was fantastic from the bruschetta, to the gnocchi, to the roasted potatoes.  It was all fantastic.  I even went out on my own limb and ordered sformantina di melanzane alla parmigiana, eggplant in marinara sauce with parmigiano.  It was quite literally to die for.  Despite being surrounded by the best carbs life has to offer, namely pasta, I find I eat far more vegetables here than I do in America.  Hopefully, this will be one of the many Italian practices I take home with me. 

It was much more appealing in person, I swear.

Okay, so now I just have to digress a bit and rant about European bathrooms.  Not to sound pretentious, but I consider myself a fairly savvy traveler when it comes to Italy.  I can speak the language enough to at least communicate and I try to keep my head down and my voice low to avoid unwanted attention, but I have to admit, I cannot figure out European public bathrooms to save my life.  Not necessarily the functionality of them, I can do that.  It's more of an identification problem.  I've found that most bathrooms in Italy are unisex.  No problem.  Basically, you wander back to the bathroom to find the men and women share a sink and mirror area and the actual stalls break off into the specific genders.  No cause for alarm, right?  Wrong.  The individual stalls would be great, if they were more clearly marked.  Often times the men's stall is marked and the other is left blank.  I assume, as I hope the natives do, that this means the unmarked/unmanned stall is meant for women.  I could be coming out of left field with this logic, but I'm pretty sure I've used at least three bathrooms meant for men.  But I digress.

After lunch, we wanted to meander around the hills streets.  We started down one particular road only to be met by a car.  We split off to either side of the road.  Hannah and I to the left; Kassie to the right.  Well, somehow or another, a ceramic pot holding a plant was knocked over and shattered.  I maintain the car did it, and Kassie denies touching it.  So we just sort of fled the scene while a waiter from the respective restaurant screamed vanities at us, none of which I will repeat here.  So much for keeping our heads down... 

After that fiasco we decided to take a more calming turn and wandered into another museum.  The Museo di Disceon to be precise.  It was a church converted into a museum to house some of Cortona's local famous artists and other gems.  It was a great way to spend a few hours and five euros.  I adored every minute of it.  Like most museums in Italy, the art mainly depicts religious events.  This usually pertains directly to Mary.  I'm very interested in artistic interpretations of the Madonna.  (If you ever wanto to hear me ramble mindlessly, bring this up).  Usually, the Madonna is depicted as a fairly adrogynous, apart from her face.  However, most of these paintings showed her in full third trimester of her pregnancy.  Just something, I found interesting, you may not though.  

We wandered back up to the bus stop, not before grabbing Hannah some mediocre cheesecake gelato.  As we were waiting for the bus, there were two little boys running around.  They were brothers, and, in the Italian fashion, they were showing their strength in front of a beautiful older woman to gain her attention.  As we were getting on the bus,  the younger boy, maybe seven, said to her, "Hai bella faccia, bella faccia".   "You have a beautiful face, a beautiful face".  Which, if that doesn't melt your heart, nothing will.