Cortona

Yesterday's adventure was Cortona, a picturesque hilltop town about an hour from Florence that is most famous for having starred in Under the Tuscan Sun. Carla and I ventured forth with our dearest buddy Trenitalia, and found ourselves at the train station in Camucia, which is the sprawling town on the plain below Cortona's mountain. No sooner did we get off the train, however, then I see this guy Mark from my Italian class standing there waving at me. I've never really talked to him, but he seemed nice, so we stopped to say hi, and he had this Italian man with him who didn't speak any English. This guy, as it turned out, was a dear family friend of Mark's parents, who rent a villa in Cortona a couple of weeks out of every summer. Yes, rich, and from CA, too, the lucky bastard. Mark and his roommate had come to stay and be force-fed for the weekend, and this man, known only to Mark as "Dad", offered us a ride up the ginormous mountain.

So we hop in this guy's VW and he proceeds to propel us up the freakishly windy roads of this mountain at an insane speed, all the while chattering to Mark in Italian, who--being in beginner class with me--was trying valiantly to understand and communicate back. We did catch the part where he told Mark, after Mark said he had to go back to school and study that night, that yeah, if he had such gorgeous women at his school he'd be right there studying too. Mark was kind enough to agree heartily with him, which is good, because Mark is good looking, by both me and Carla's standards (meanwhile his roommate, who was Asian, also appealed to both of us, which is surprising because we almost never agree). So while we're hurtling along he starts asking Mark if we want to go to this place, and mentioning San Francesco, and Mark agreed without even really knowing what he meant. Off we zoom down even more horrifying steep, curving roads with a cliff on one side, roads that you would never want to believe are two way, but yes they are, and--did I mention I hadnt even put on my seatbelt, assuming this to be a gentle five minute ride, and then I didnt want to seem like an American wimp because no one else in the car was wearing one, yes, foolish, I know, so the thoughts running through my mind were "ahhhh im going to die....but im going to die in italy, whee!"--then we arrive at this amazing monastery, tucked into a niche between two mountains, with a panoramic view of a lush fir forest and a river and a mini waterfall to boot! Turns out this was where St Francis lived before he went back to Assisi and started his ministry there, so we got to go and check out the incredibly cramped cell that he called home. It was sweet.

After this, "Dad" safely deposited us in the center of Cortona, and even offered to pick us us later, which I declined because I felt bad for imposing--Mark had told the guy we were friends from school, but I really don't know him at all! So we explore Cortona, which is preserved in its medieval glory, and where a woman walking by saw my (Carla's) sweatshirt and said "Fairfield University! Why, my husband went there!". We stopped in a couple of museums and enjoyed the view before commencing what Let's Go called a "thigh-burning 15 minute walk" to the Medici fortress on the top (Cortona was bought by Florence during the Renaissance, muahaha). So we're walking, huffing and puffing slightly because this is one mother of a hill, and we pass where the U of Georgia has its campus up there, and then we see some girls sitting with their laptops on a rock wall that is actually a cliff, and we're walking, and then all of a sudden there's screaming, and the girls are running away, and what is there right behind me and Carla but a gigantic SWARM OF BEES. I'm talking thousands of bees here, a swarm over ten feet wide, with that horrible buzzing noise...AHHHH. Ahead of us is the steepest part of the climb and the bees look like they're moving, so we turn around and I run frantically down this hill, yes screaming, because there are bees all around me, I don't know of what variety, and hey, I don't know if I'm allergic or not and I didn't think this was the day to find out. Carla, meanwhile, walked rather calmly down the hill behind me. Protestants. They live to suffer.

So then we talked to the Georgia girls, one of whom was annoyed becase she had abandoned her laptop on the cliff wall, and they had never seen anything like it before. The bees had just swarmed up from underneath them. Needless to say, we and the several other people making the climb to the fortress decided that the view from there was quite sufficient. After this we bought some bus tickets, thinking that a bus would be coming some time, but no, it was Sunday, no such luck. Since a taxi would have cost an arm and a leg, we decided to Lutheranism it up and walk our butts the four miles or so down the mountain and through the town to the train station. Again, ahhhhh. My legs hurt this morning, and for good frickin reason. However, it certainly was an adventure, we had a great time, and Cortona was deliciously beautiful, everything Americans think of when they think of Tuscan hill towns.