Opposites attract me

The towns of Sansepolcro and Anghiari are both in the Arezzo province, and both are wonderful places to take a walk and spend some enjoyable time. Despite those similarities, the two small cities couldn't be more different. 

First, Sansepolcro is absolutely flat and shaped like a perfect rectangle with tall outer walls. Its streets form an easy-to-navigate grid pattern. Anghiari is built atop a steep hill and its profile is spiked with turrets and towers of all shapes and sizes. Its piazzas are tippy and cobbled streets run up and down in every direction, like so many writhing snakes. This is Anghiari.

When you are in Sansepolcro you spend your time looking within the walls for the next museum, the next historic palazzo, the next boutique. When in Anghiari, around every medeival turn and through ancient tunels are long vistas backed by cloud-topped mountains, greens, grays, peeks of sun.

In Sansepolcro we continued our quest to see the works of Piero della Francesca, who lived and worked in the town. Some of his most famous works are in the Museo Civico, including the "Resurrection," considered a masterpiece, which he painted on the wall of the Town Hall council chamber. The small museum also contains works by other artists, but none quite as exciting as the Pieros. Piero also had a house there, which is now a museum. Here it is.

Here is the lace-making school. When I peeked inside the windows, stations with all the lace tools were set up waiting for the next set of students to arrive.

In Anghiari, I wanted to see the Busatti linen factory, which I have known about for many years, since having bought some beautiful jacquard guest towels at the shop in Cortona in 2000. Busatti still weaves jacquards in patterns from the Renaissance in pure linen and cotton and we were lucky enough to get an insider's tour of the ancient weaving factory by Livio Sassolini, an 8th generation Busatti (mother's side) who was in the shop when we asked where the factory was.

 He happily walked us through the oily-smelling clanging machinery and explained the process. Now whenever I look at my pretty blue guest towels I will think about the smells and the sounds of the place where they were woven.

It's all about the grapes

Today was the first of two days we will spend this week in the Chianti region, which, of course is on the map as it is a hot spot for top-quality wines made primarily from the Sangiovese grape. Just like in Montepulciano and Montalcino, the sangiovese is the king of grapes, but it takes on a personality of its own when it comes from the soils of the Chianti region, which are very chalky.

We began our giorno del vino in the tiny town of Castellina in Chianti, which we visited on our second trip to Italy in 2000. It doesn't look any different and we were happy to see that the restaurant where we ate twice is still there and has the same menu. We did a quick tasting in one of the wine shops to wake up our palates and get a feel for the regional elixir.

Weeks ago we made a reservation for lunch at Casa Emma, a 60-acre winery that produces about 80,000 bottles per year. The recommendation came from a wine blogger who Joe likes to read.

While it's not a restaurant, per se, they do serve a set lunch by reservation only with pairings of 4 wines plus their vin santo and grappa. We were given the best table overlooking the vines. The setting is mozzafiato and we learned that the Emma of Casa Emma is 85 years old and comes to the winery each afternoon to help out in some way.  The lunch was traditional antipasti with their Chianti Classico, then the Vignalparco, which comes from a very specific hilltop vineyard. The homemade pasta was topped with a wild boar ragu, the boar having been shot in the vineyards by someone on the staff. It was paired with a riserva and then the Soloio, pronounced Solo io--only me--because the winemaker used 100% merlot grapes and was apparently the first guy in Chianti to try growing merlot. The vin santo was paired, as it should be, with cantucci. We skipped the grappa, as we really don't like it, but finished up with espresso. The whole experience was perfect in every way.

Afterwards we drove the scenic, winding roads and made a couple of stops. First in Panzano, which is famous for the "Mad Butcher" who creates nightly meat-fest dinners at his macelleria. It's a pretty town, but other than the meat we didn't see a good reason to stay. We did pluck a pair of giant figs off a tree as we walked into the town. Yum!

Next up was a stop in Radda, which is lively and touristy with lots of shops and enotecas. It's a great place for a walk and a stop to taste a few wines--and there are hundreds--made in the area.

Art and antiquities day

We explored a couple of new towns today--both north of Arezzo in a hilly region that looks a lot like Vermont without the dairy cows.

Bibbiena was small, cute and had an historic church with two beautiful examples of della Robbia reliefs on opposite walls near the altar. I always admire the della Robbia's as they are about 500 years old yet the glazes are fresh and bright and could have been done in recent times. We had a cappuccino on the piazza, enjoying the sun and the breeze, then moved on as there isn't a lot happening in Bibbiena.

Next up was Poppi. Joe had this town bookmarked as it has a huge castle that is open for exploration.

The Castello di Poppi is in a hilltop position with 360 degree views of the surrounding countryside. It is historically significant as it is the site of an important battle between the Guelphs and the Ghibillines in 1289. The poet Dante Alighieri actually fought in the battle and it provided him with material on which he based some of the Divine Comedy.

We walked throughout the castello, which was amazingly well preserved, then Joe just had to climb to the top of the bell tower, but not me. I don't do towers. 

After we took a walk around the town to see what else was up in Poppi, we decided to head over to Arezzo for a late lunch and some vino.

Although we've visited Arezzo 4-5 times we had never stopped to see the fresco cycle done by Piero della Francesca, probably the most famous and revered artist of this part of Italy. To view it, you have to pay an admission charge at the front door of the church of San Francesco, then must walk behind the altar where the lively colors and realistic images jump right out. In the very next chapel were the frescoes of another artist from the Arezzo area, but when seen immediately next to the della Francescas, they seemed pale and cartoony--not at all the quality of the others.

Yesterday, Arezzo held its annual Giostro di Saracino, which is as big to them as the Palio is to Siena. The Piazza Grande was full of stadium seating and the cobbled surface was covered in dirt. The place where we wanted to have lunch is right on the piazza so we had to make a decision as to whether it was worth it to stay there with all the noise of the crews taking down the bleachers. Here's what we had for lunch:

I think it was worth it.

Not going anywhere fast

Well here we are at the check in line for our flight on Iberia. We've been in line for 2 hours and there's no end in sight as the whole check in system is completely dead. Several technicians have been called to help, but nothing yet. 

Ugh! Why does every trip start like this?

Update: after 3 hrs in line we are finally at the gate. The bad news is that the check-in process is being done manually with hand written boarding passes and bag tags. Stay tuned to see if we are reunited with our luggage in the near future.

Having a much deserved glass of wine at Vino Volo while the other 300 passengers are written in. It's going to be a long night.

Update: we arrived in Madrid nearly 3 hrs late so missed our connection to Bologna. We were reticketed on a flight leaving this afternoon, which results in a 7 hr layover here. Some good news: Iberia gave us free lunch vouchers to be used at any restaurant in the airport, and we are now comfortably settled at the Iberia VIP Club. Here they have free coffee, snacks and cocktails, so we should be okay till we head out for lunch.

Still this is giving us heartburn as we had to change our meeting time with the caretaker of our rental, the car rental reservation and the time of our dinner reservation tonight.

Final update: we arrived at our rental in Lucignano at 9:30 this evening, met the caretaker, dropped our bags and headed out the door to find some dinner as we were starving and in need of wine. Just about 8 doors down is the simple, family run Schicchero, which allowed us to come and eat even though we were the only people there and they had already started cleaning up for the night.

An antipasto Toscano and a plate of homemade pasta with Bolognese straightened us right out and changed the mood immensely.

Corning, day two

We spent four hours at the glass museum on Sunday, but there were still several exhibits that we'd not had a chance to see, so the plan was to have breakfast then hit the museum until we had made the most of our time in Corning.

On Market Street there was a glass studio called Vitrix, where you can watch the resident glass blowers, called "gaffers," work on pieces for the shop. One of the best things about this town is that because beautiful glass is so abundant, it's rather cheap to buy. So I bought myself a souvenir. Here's what you can watch in the back room of the shop: 

Before heading back to the glass museum however, we walked over to the Rockwell Museum of western art, which we paid a few extra dollars for a museum combo ticket to see. Wow! Not only is there one world class museum in Corning, there are actually two. The Rockwells were wealthy glass industry magnates and amassed a personal collection of paintings and sculptures depicting Native Americans, cowboys, western landscapes, etc.  Included in the collection are Remingtons, Russells, Bierstadts and a Wyeth. Not too shabby. 

The Rockwells also had a collection of more than 2,000 pieces of fine art glass, which is housed in a separate wing of the glass museum.

We walked across the pedestrian bridge that connects the downtown side of Corning with the factory district--where the museum now stands--and finished seeing the exhibits there.

This is the only pic that Carolyn let me take of her--tucked behind a giant Dale Chihuly installation.

Corning NY . . . Who knew??

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I volunteered to accompany Carolyn on a 7-hour drive to upstate New York to see an exhibit at the Corning Museum of Glass, but now that I am here I am surprised that there's not more publicity about the place.

It's a very sophisticated museum in an ultra modern facility set in a tiny valley in a town that was once famous for its glass manufacturing. Corning . . . Think Corningware and Pyrex and Corelle. Now that the glass manufacturing industry has all but closed down, the museum is truly the only game in town.

A daily schedule that runs 9 to 8, 7 days a week seems ambitious in this dinky town, but then you see the countless tour busses parked in the lot and realize that this museum's reach is way beyond local.

When you see the flyer that lists the non-stop schedule of glass-making demonstrations in state-of-the-art theaters, you learn that this is a place that strives to entertain and educate people from around the world about how art glass is made in the present day. Yet, as exciting as the live demos are, done by young, personable, enthusiastic glass artists, they stress that they are still using ancient glass recipes, ancient techniques and that not all that much has changed in the 3,500 years since the first glassblower dropped a piece on the floor and said "oops."

The permanent exhibits show hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of practical and decorative glass from every continent on Earth and trace the origins of various techniques that changed glass-making history. It's so much to take in at once we had to take a break and make a plan to resume where we left off--someplace between paperweights and Tiffany windows. 

Our suite at the Inn at the Gaffer Grille is large and pleasant. Our dinner at the Market Street Brew Pub was satisfying and comfortable. Tomorrow's plan is to take a look at the Rockwell Museum's collection of Steuben art glass, then head back to the glass museum to pick up where we left off. Www.cmog.org.

It's a wild world

This isn't the greatest photo, but at least I captured this "spinoso" as we were driving around at twilight. Earlier this week, there were two of them in our driveway, then we spotted this one on the road to our house. Then, when we got home tonight, the pair was back in the driveway again. So at the beginning of the week, I'd never seen a porcupine in the wild, and by tonight, I had seen five of them. Very cool!