Some castles, some old stuff, a famous huge house, and some Rotelli's

Yesterday morning I took off into the Val Di Chiana. My first stop was in a little town called Castiglione Del Lago, right on Lake Trasimeno


It was Market day!

This is Sonja making me a panino from fresh crusty bread and my favorite pecorino cheese. She is great. She travels with her meat and cheese cart to a new town every day, selling amazing products for way too cheap. She has become a market-day friend of mine :) I saw her this morning at the market here in Montepulciano too, hee hee




Castiglione Del Lago was sooo pretty. I just thought it was so cool how there's just a random fortress, really well preserved, hangin out on the side of an overly blue lake. It had it's own smell too...
Sadly I couldn't hang out at the beach forever, so I headed to Cortona!


Cortona was really beautiful, but honestly I didn't really know what to do with myself when I got there. I found the piazza, wandered around for a few minutes, found it to be a lot like every other ancient town in Tuscany, and I headed out to find my next adventure:

This is Bramasole. It belongs to Frances Mayes who wrote a book about it called Under The Tuscan Sun. I found it after talking to 4 people, old and young, all of whom knew exactly where the house was but had a hard time explaining how to find it. That's because the road doesn't have a name and it's covered in trees and is hardly a road at all! Which makes it all the more beautiful. Hey Babo, look what Frances Mayes drives - a PANDA VERDE!! hahahaha!!! (I changed the coloring of the picture, so it looks kinda yellow here... but i'm serious, she drove a Panda verde. I laughed lots). Frances was probably looking at me through her window thinking, "Why in the blazes is some chick on a scooter taking pictures of my house?" (Except she's a writing professor, so I'm sure she came up with a better word than "blazes"). But I'm sure I wasn't the first one, so... I left happy :) And her front gate didn't have a doorbell, probly because she was sick of weird people ringing it. I wasn't brave enough to hop her fence to meet her, sorry folks :(
After Cortona I met Tina at the Outlet Village. I would have taken pictures, but it all happened so fast... We went in every store and looked at every rack. It was great. Italian clothing is so strange, but I'm kinda liking it. I didn't buy much, but I learned a lot of Italian :)

The day ended with lots of food at Rotelli's :) They have this awesome gazebo outside their house and we ate dinner out there. It was so beautiful, and for some reason they don't have bugs like I do at my house. Awesome.