Tuscany: The lost blog

We noticed this morning that the computer erased our blog entry on the thigh of the big boot. I'm sure it's out in cyberspace with all the lost emails we seem to experience. I'll recap our visit to Tuscany and Umbria.




This is the Italian countryside that we envisioned driving through. No endless sprawl and roundabouts, just great two-lane country roads through olive groves and vineyards sprinkled with your occasional hill-town. We quickly discovered that many of the well-known hill towns have completely given in to tourism so we skipped them altogether and stopped in the unknown ones. We weren't looking for wax museums and chinese trinkets, just good olives and old castle walls.




The hill town of Orvieto had an interesting old well. It was an engineering marvel when it was built some 800 years ago, with two spiral staircases winding down the walls of the well allowing people and donkeys to go down 300 feet and fetch water. Allie asked if it wouldn't have been easier to simply lower a bucket on a rope. It's hard to argue with that.



Dagobert had ideas of his own and came down with a flat tire outside of Siena, one of the largest and most well-known towns. We took that as a hint and stopped for the night. What a treat! Siena has one of the most beautiful cathedrals and town squares that we have seen.




Siena also allowed us to check off another one of our Italy goals: A good home-style Italian meal of fresh pasta delivered by an old guy who didn't know a word of English. We finished the night with good gelato. In the morning we limped Dagobert down to the repair shop for a tire repair and headed North. I'm sure that in the lost blog there were Pulitzer-worthy descriptions of Tuscany but they are lost forever and we are in France now so c'est la vie.

Before we left the USA a friend was telling me about a famous bridge where thousands of lovers have engraved their names on padlocks and affixed them to the railing as a symbol of their endless love. I couldn't remember where the bridge was located but on one of our first days in Prague we were wandering a backstreet and came across the bridge. We were amazed that we had randomly discovered it. It turns out that this phenomenon is quite the trend in Europe. Since then we have found lovers' padlocks attached to all sorts of significant landmarks: cathedrals, bridges, alters, you name it. One railing was so covered with locks it was sagging under the weight. Allie observed that at least it would be hard to steal!