Travel

We wake up Friday morning and decide to rest today.  We’ve been on the road for five and a half weeks now and we’ve noticed that periodically, a rest from travel, people and sightseeing is necessary.  We spend the day by the pool and the evening in our room.  My left heal still feels inflamed […]

Wednesday morning, we wake up one last time in Cortona.  This has been one of my favorite travel weeks ever.  We go to breakfast and sit in the patio, as we’ve done all week.  The servers, who we’ve come to know by name, (Melina, Paolo, Taziana and Nicole) know that it’s our last day.  They

It’s our last full day in Cortona.  We eat breakfast, which we have narrowed down to arugula, carrots and tomatoes with olive oil, mixed nuts with plain yogurt, and fruit.  Each table is presented daily with a tower of assorted breads on the top dish, various fruits on the middle dish and usually two slices

Today is my friend Faith’s 86th birthday.  Shortly after waking up, I send her a birthday greeting. Shawn and I head to breakfast followed by pool time. Our day is leisurely and it’s appreciated as we’ve been so unusually social for so many days in a row! At four p.m., however, we do have a

Good morning again, beautiful Cortona.  We have breakfast, spend a little time by the pool and then go to the spa for our massages.  We spend time before the treatments in the huge, indoor roman pool with many water therapy stations.  In addition, the spa has a steam room and a dry sauna.  By the

At breakfast this morning, we say goodbye to our friends Angela and Carl from Germany.  I ask her if she is the leader of her wonderful team at work that she told us about previously.  Humbly, she says yes, but only of the local area, not of the larger company.  I tell her that I

We have breakfast as usual this morning and go for another long walk.  We find Villa Laura, the home that was renovated for the movie, “Under the Tuscan Sun”.  It’s not as easy to see and enjoy from the street as Villa Bramasole was.  The day is hot and we find ourselves on hillside trails,

Magical.  Today is magical.  After breakfast, we take a walk up the long, narrow brick streets, past the village area of Cortona that we have already begun to explore.  We walk up to an area with narrow paved streets and continuous hillside views of the valley below.  There is a rock archway along the way

On Wednesday morning, we pack up and head down to breakfast.  We are served by Martin’s wife, Greta, this morning and she assures us that her cappuccino is special!  She affirms that her sister will be here today, but she won’t see her until late tonight.  While we are eating breakfast, we see the owner,

Tuesday evening, we have our last meal in Assisi.  We head down to the grassy area where we’ve spent hours every evening having light, tapa style dinners and bottles of lovely, Italian red wine.  When we arrive, we note that there is only one other couple sitting on chairs in the grass and one in