Hanging out in St Francis' haunts

Santa Maria delle Grazie Day 13 28 May 2009

We sleep in, as with Tuscan villas you have shutters, double glazed windows and then internal wooden shutters and curtains.  With all that you can never tell when it is morning, as not one ray of light can penetrate.  When Lucky's barking wakes us at 8am, we scrabble around and offer sincere apologies for our late appearance.  After breakfast, photos and warm farewells, Robbie escorts us back to the Autostrada and we begin a new experience for us.  We set off, with no bookings and no fixed destination other than the general regions of Tuscany and Umbria.  A mixture of excitement and anxiety swirl within!!

However, the first stop is at Italfama, one of our suppliers.  Again, we are escorted to their facility by one of the sons of the owner.  What we find astounds us.  They have a show room filled with the most amazing chess sets you could ever imagine.  When you come up the stairs you are greeted by an amazing table (that is a chess board) with chess pieces ornately and finely detailed in silver and gold, each one nearly a foot high!  Wow!!  We are greatly encouraged to find that they hand make everything that they sell, right from the raw materials.  Many of our suppliers talk of competition from China and how this is making their livelihoods so hard.  The people here are really lovely though and we are genuinely excited to see the products we sell on display here, along with many other possibilities.  What they do resonates so well with our own business that we sense a mutually beneficial relationship that will endure.  Their commitment to quality and precision in all they do is just what we need. We have so much more confidence now in marketing their products.  The relationship element of our business is definitely here too.

We are escorted back to the Autostrada and set off much encouraged to.....Well, let's think about that.   Drive off in conversation debating the merits of Arezzo (where we need to return the car), Perugia (home of Italian chocolates) and then start talking about smaller towns, such as Assisi. We have such good memories of Assisi from when we were there last time, we decide to go there and use it as our base.   We refine the idea a bit more and decide that the best place to stay would be Santa Maria delle Grazie, the town immediately below Assisi.

Enroute, we pass Cortona, the town made famous by Francis Mayes in her books, Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany.  We enjoyed these so much that we were so tempted to call in there for lunch.  We found a lovely Tuscan village we can so understand her falling in love with.  It was very friendly, had lots of Americans in it, but even so had a lovely feel.  We had a fantastic lunch there, looking down right on the main Piazza.  Hmm... love to come back here and explore some more.

As we roll in towards Assisi, we come first to the town of Santa Maria delle Grazie, we see a hotel sign and stop and Kathy goes in to investigate.  She discovers two men in a haze of cigar smoke poring over a chess board.  She asks if they have a room  - "Certo"; the location is good (right next door to the magnificent Santa Maria delle Grazie Basilica) and the price is excellent E50 per night for a double room.  Done.  I rescue the car from it's temporary illegal park and whizz around the corner to remove the luggage before parking.  I wander in to what I think is the hotel and speak to the chap in my halting Italian that (first my sister then) my wife has booked a room - he  knows nothing and asks the price and when I tell him, he tells me in no uncertain terms it definitely is not his hotel.  The trunk on wheels and I do not feel welcome here and turn on our wheels and exit.  It turns out that Kathy has rented a "room" from the next door place, which must be a sore point with the hotel.  The room is just fine though, but does not have all the trappings of a hotel.  It only has one problem, a low door-way (which is common).  I did not detect this and hit my head hard on the portal and it floored me.  The owners were very concerned and sympathetic.  The average Italian is about 5 foot something.

We wander over later to the huge Basilica just next door.  Inside it is the little quaint, but highly decorated church that St Francis received his call at and was the one that he worshipped at and called his own for most of his life.  It is so ironic in some ways that this vast cathedral has been built over the top of and completely dwarfing the tiny and humble place he worshipped at.  He truly was an amazing person though and you can feel it when you come close to these places.  Today, as it is a long weekend here, there are many pilgrims coming to pay homage to his life.

We wander out the back of the Basilica and there is a garden there that St Francis used to frequent.  As we proceed down the corridor, there is a full size figure of St Francis in his simple cloth robes with what we thought was a stuffed white dove nesting in a bag he is carrying and another one sitting beside him.  How quaint.  Then as we get closer we see that one of the birds is alive - no both are!!  It was truly amazing.  These birds were completely tame and living inside this enclosed walkway, perfectly happily, with no cage or anything around them!!

That evening we wander around the local streets to try to find somewhere authentic to eat.  After a bit of fruitless searching, we find what appears to be just the place and it is.  No tourists, great simple local fare on the menu and low prices.  We sample local specialities, knowing we won't get these anywhere else and are not disappointed.  We return home full and very satisfied.

Santa Maria delle Grazie Day 14 29 May 2009

Today we are off to Deruta, the home of some very traditional, but highly priced ceramics.  Last time we were here we were a bit daunted by the price of these products and decided not to pursue them, but this time we are going back for a second look.  We find Deruta really easily and it is not hard.  Right beside the autostrada are some absolutely huge vases standing each about 10 - 15m high.  We wander in to the industrial area and go to the place that last time we found unfriendly and not welcoming.  This time we are the only ones in the show-room and find a lovely older man there who greets us warmly and is very friendly when we tell him we are from New Zealand.  He has a very good customer in Australia and he hopes that we might be a similarly good customer from NZ.  We also find that not all the items are at the astronomical prices we remembered and are greatly encouraged.  These people pretty much only produce for the export market and appear very proficient at it.  We leave after taking lots of photos very heartened about the possibility of importing some of these truly beautiful items.

After a coffee at a local 'bar' we then go up to the "centro storico", the old town to mooch around and find some lunch.  It is a beautiful old town like most of them are and we stumble across the ceramics museum that is there and get lots of background on the history of how these have been made here for hundreds of years.  We are pretty much the only ones in the museum and we find a distinct lack of tourists around.  In fact, each place we go past and cast even a dis-interested glance towards, we are greeted warmly by the proprietor and pressed into viewing each item and having an explanation of its history and its qualities and properties and the special prices on offer.  Most of these people have been making ceramics for at least 3 generations.  We feel sorry for them, but also confirmed in our decision to trade with the big guys, not the little back yard operators.

We then look around for a local restaurant and find one in a little back street that is just right.  Wonderful antipasti and our culinary experiences are just getting better and better.  We are continually amused at the Italians who are around us, who quiz the waiter on every aspect of the menu.  "how thick is the pasta?  What shape is it?  What are the ingredients of this?"  Etc etc.  Then they proceed to order some collection of items that are not on the menu!  We meekly ask for the items we want!  The waiters seem to understand this and are extremely tolerant of what would be very rude behaviour from a tourist.

We return to Santa Maria delle Grazie to find a band setting up on the stage just outside our bedroom window (with only a narrow side street between).  Hmm...  Wonder what is going on here.  We decide to have a siesta and then to head up to Assisi for the afternoon and evening meal.  The town seems to be filling up rapidly with lots of visitors coming in for the long weekend.  We take the bus up the hill to Assisi and are a bit disappointed.  They say you can never go back to your old school yard, and yes, we found the throngs of tourists (many of them Italians) a bit overwhelming and not the lovely peaceful memory we had of our last visit to Assisi.  After visiting the main Duomo and seeing St Francis' tomb again, we get irritated by people ignoring the large signs saying no photography and head up to the top of the town.  After a while it is dinner time and we find a restaurant in a side street that looks OK and we are seated outside.  However, the temperature is dropping and I am glad we relocate inside.  The entire experience is a series of botches by the waitress that include her little PDA not working, bringing the wrong dish for Kathy, giving us the wrong bill.  Apart from that everything was perfect!

By the time we reach our room again, everything is set up for the band, but no action yet.  We look out the window at 1030 and yes, it looks like it is about to start.  This is no "oompah" band.  It appears to be a collection of young bands with a heavy metal "grunge" style.  They are not short of power and the sound waves are not at all daunted by the 4 foot think solid masonry walls, the external shutters, double glazed windows, internal shutters and two layers of curtains.  Even with my noise cancelling ear-phones on it sounds like I am right there!  At one stage a cover of Green Day's "When September Ends" rings out then back to their own material which we did not recognise.  After the initial amused inquisitive interest has died away, sleep did not come easily.  I was not one of the crowd that demanded the set of two encores, but fall into a deep sleep as the pack down got underway outside.

Santa Maria delle Grazie Day 15 30 May 2009

I awake with "When September Ends" running through my mind!

After a couple of pretty feeble attempts at rain earlier, finally we are presented with some real rain.  We are scheduled to visit a lovely hilltop town in Umbria today that is only connected to the outside world by a think walk bridge to the town which takes up the entire small hilltop.  In the faint hope that we will encounter only showers we set off, firstly to Orvieto, a nearby town, to be followed by Civita di Bagnoregio.

The autostrada is relatively busy with camper vans and holiday makers and the roads are not that flash in places and sometimes vehicles travelling the opposite direction throw up huge showers of spray from puddles on their side, right over the barriers.  We almost aquaplane a couple of times ourselves.  We arrive in Orvieto and it is a lovely old town, built on top of a hill that in medieval times gave it great popularity.  It was relatively easily defended.  After finding a park inside the old town, we wander around and find a service of some kind going on in the main duomo and the town is swamped with Italians and their families who are all dressed up for the occasion. There are also a lot of people walking around (in the rain) dressed up distinctly like Robin Hood, complete with costume, boots, bow and arrows in a quiver.  I would like to return to Orvieto for more of a look, but we head off to Civita di Bagnoregio, as the rain eased.

The drive from Orvieto is on some really narrow country roads, finally going through the narrow ancient lanes of Bagnoregio which fortunately they have made one way.  We are ushered into a car-park and after booking a 2 hour stay, we set off for the walk to Civita di Bagnoregio.  At a vantage point before the walkway starts I grab a few shots, but it is very grey and brooding.  As we head down the road, the rain starts again in earnest and after some deliberation; we decide to return to this ancient place on a future trip.  I would love to have visited it, but it would have been miserable and cold in the rain.  For once it is good to have my polar fleece and Kathy feels quite cold.  We toddle back to the room after drying out in the car.  The rain does not stop.

We ask the proprietor of the room for a recommendation for a restaurant which is fortunately nearby.  First though, we sample the local version of a Campari Spritzer.  It seems to be different every place we go. We see the barman make up this one and can't believe firstly the amount of Campari, followed by an ample dose of Asti Spumante, with orange, ice and finally a little bit of water to top up a large glass.  This drink was delicious, but we shudder to think of the alcoholic content and after enjoying this, we stagger across the road to the recommended restaurant.  This place is "solo italiani" and a real trattoria style.  The food is delightfully simple, but very tasty and the service is delightful.  We would come back here if we could and highly recommend this place.