Today we went to San Gimignano. It was nice to see this place again. I think when we came here 7 years ago, the bus parked in back of the town, because I didn’t remember any of the main road and entrance from the top of the hill. I was looking forward to buying some alabaster products, and I was not disappointed. The trinkets were all the same things I remembered. They had some Etruscan people and horsies again, almost bought one but only got an alabaster jar. We saw some kitties to pet; they didn’t seem as mangey as the pregnant cat at the house. They were on the way to a little rampart to take pictures of the valley. I tried to do a 360° picture, but people were in the way. I made the mistake of moving around them, and the pictures won’t line up at all. Looks like that’s one town that won’t get a nice long picture.
So anyway, that was all we did. I think this just driving to a new town every day is working out well. I guess you don’t really have to get everything planned so far in advance for things to go smoothly.
26 June 2003
My brother and I took another excursion to Isola d’Elba. I should say we rode the train lots and spent an hour on Elba. It took us 9 hours to get to Piombino!! The way the map shows train service was sort of like going along three sides of a square. It probably would have been a 1-2 hour ride if we could go directly to Piombino. So, we had to go up to Florence yet again, then down to Livorno. The service from Livorno to Piombino was quite limited at the hour we were there (we should have left Camucia at 5 instead of 7 am but I like my sleep) so we had to wait two hours. So we finally got to Piombino (the maritime station, not centrale) at around 3, and it is an hour ride on the boat to Elba. So that meant we didn’t get to Elba until 4. To top it off, the last train out of Piombino was at 7:10, so we would have to leave Elba on the 5:30 boat (they go every hour). Do the math: get there at 4, leave at 5:30. We boarded the boat again (with those annoying German students) at around 5. We traveled a total of 15 hours to visit a place for 50 minutes. The trains back home were not bad. It apparently is a lot easier to leave that place than get there. The last hang up was that the train didn’t go all the way to Camucia again, we had to get picked up in Arezzo. We ended up getting home at around 1 am. I think that trip we could have planned a bit better, but I didn’t want to be on a train at 5 in the morning.
So anyway, the port we got into, Portafiaria or something, is really beautiful. The buildings along the water are all different colors, and there is also the fort at the tip of the jetty. I saw small boats that could take you all over to the lesser ports. You could also rent mopeds and bikes and cars for what I thought were pretty good prices. It’s a shame we weren’t there overnight because I would have definitely rented a moped. It just looked like it would have been a good place to stay at least a night. I’m sure the lesser ports are less shoppy, but there are still a lot of hotels. I’ll just have to be happy with the 50 minutes we spent there with all the gelato stands and tourists.27 June 2003
Friday we went to San Marino, but before we went there, we stopped in Deruta, which is the ceramic capital of Italy I think. That area has some nice deposits of clay or something. The way it works, apparently, is these artists buy the pots already done. They do not do the throwing (these are all mass produced anyway), just the glazing. And you walk into any of these stores, and there is the artist painting her pot right there! The point of going to Deruta was for me to pick out a birthday present. I thought I wouldn't be able to pick out a single pattern I liked from all the "traditional" designs. I was getting tired of the same old stuff, but thankfully I found a couple designs I really liked. My first choice was what we ended up getting, my second choice was a red background/blue flower design. So the place we got my stuff was just a seller, and she had to take us to the artist for me to pick out everything I wanted. I got four bowls and four plates of different colors. And they have a very nontraditional design. I hope they make it home in one piece so I don’t have to be disappointed [some major foreshadowing there. Turns out they arrives practically ground to dust]. But the point of this is that the seller didn’t speak English, and it was only by the help of her daughter’s friend that we get this transaction to work. So, I’ll have four place settings of authentic ceramics, and a story to go with them [or just a continuing reminder of why we should have obeyed the sign that says "we ship everywhere" at the shop with the other design].
So anyway, we then went on to San Marino. I am really sad it has been so hazy, because we could have gotten some fantastic pictures. my brother and I went up to the First Tower and we had a very nice view. It was so hazy you can’t tell the ground from the ocean in some of the pictures. Apparently the principality of S. Marino is the land of the free, which means no regulations on anything. I could have found my gun-nut friends some neato gun accessories. The gift shops along the path up to the towers were filled with the tackiest stuff I’ve ever seen. And now that I say tacky, I’ll say that my mother found some trinkets she thought were really pretty. She got a bracelet of all different stones, I guess that was OK. It was this crystal toucan that was the tacky thing. It looks like a weeble-wobble but glass [the was before I knew who this "Swarovski" guy was]. So, we drove for a pretty long time and spent just a little while there, but I think it all worked out in the end. I can’t imagine us spending any more time there, though.
We decided to stop for dinner in Sansepulcro for some reason, since every one said continue on to Arezzo (eating there would have meant we were eating at a normal time). So of course my mother started yelling again. We strolled around while restaurants were opening for dinner, and we found a nice clothes store. I got a nice little Max Mara dress out of the whole thing. While we were occupied with clothes, a place up the street opened. We ate in a room with caricatures on the walls. One of them looked like it could have been Rick Steves, but I’m sure it was just another Italian personality. There was one of Saddam Hussein kicking a globe. The globe was grimacing with its fingers in its ears. I wanted to buy that one. Another one looked like the Italian Prime Minister as a puppet master. Everyone was happy after dinner, except my mother’s inhaler was dirty and didn’t work, so she was freaking herself out and started crying again. It was kind of moist since we had driven through the mountains and thunderstorms, and she was having trouble breathing. But after that things were uneventful.
to be continued...
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