the top of Florence...

We left the beautiful countryside, returned our car, and started our journey to Florence. We thought a great way to get an overview of Florence would be to actually get a view over Florence. We walked the short distance to the Duomo from our hotel. It is a beautiful exterior.
Again, I remind myself when this was built and how difficult it must have been for them with the tools (and lack of power equipment) they had.


I loved the little 3-D statues that come out of the facade of the church. They are all over the place!

The interior of the church was not quite as fancy as the exterior. The many stained glass windows were gorgeous, though.

The main visual feature of the interior is the dome. It was designed by Brunelleschi and for a long time, it was the largest dome in the world.

You can climb the 436? (we counted, but got different results) steps to the top of the dome. Matthew and Andrew led the pack as we climbed up the winding staircase. Most was in the cement halls of the dome, but twice the path leads you to the inside of the actual dome. It is really cool to be so close to those paintings on the ceiling!

When you reach the top of the dome, there is a large landing where you can see a 360 degree view of Florence. What a beautiful city! This is the view from all around:

It is very high up there! Although Ali would have preferred to be closer to the ground, she was very brave!

On the way down from the dome, we were so very close to the paintings on the ceiling! It was very interesting to me to see how those magnificent paintings look so very simple up close!

If you look at the top of the dome, you will see teeny, tiny people. That is where we were!

Assisi...

Jon had done some reading on the town of Assisi and especially, St. Francis, so he was our tour guide there. We parked and walked up into the town (most of these cities were built on a hill). It was another beautiful, medieval town.

This was the church built to honor St. Francis. St. Francis was one of the first monks, and taught poverty, humility and obedience. He left his riches and lived a poor, simple life. He taught the people in Italian instead of Latin, which was radical. He loved nature and considered all creatures important. He wrote the hymn, All Creatures of Our God and King. He was a great teacher.

This is the view of Assisi from the church.

I have received inquiries as to how Andrew is doing on this long journey. This is as good a time as any to document his daily structure.

At some point of every day, he decides he has had enough. Sometimes it results in a fit...sometimes he becomes very silly....and sometimes he just, plain sits down.

However, it is not too difficult to rev him back up. It could be a fountain to play in....

Cool garbage dumpsters where you step on a handle and the lid opens up...

Or a simple snack. He is a trooper most of the time, and we have to remind ourselves that he is only 4 years old when he is not such a trooper.

This next picture is of a church dedicated to St. Claire, who was a follower of St. Francis and started a group of nuns.....I think...... It was about here that I had also seen enough churches for the day. Unfortunately, I could not just sit on the sidewalk, play in fountains or step on garbage dumpsters....but I could get gelato.

By the way, here is another version of the automatic pay toilet. You put in your coins and the turnstiles let you enter the bathrooms. Just another interesting Italian culture fact....

Orvieto....

After our cooking class with Velia, we stopped by Orvieto on the way home. It is a charming, medieval town. It is really incredible to think of those people building such magnificent buildings. They loved their cathedrals and spared no expense making them stunning.

Again, I loved taking pictures of the countryside on the way. I don't know if the pictures show how beautiful it really is.

Here is the Duomo in Orvieto. It is built with stripes of white and black marble. The facade (front) of the church is the most ornate we saw. Murals with gold decorations made it sparkle in the sun (especially with a bright blue background!)

Here is the piazza surrounding the Duomo. I love all the piazzas there are in Italy. It is a nice place to meet, relax and get your bearings.

After we saw the Duomo, we took an underground tour of the caves. All around, under the town, there are 1,100 caves. Some were dated back to the Etruscian period. Those Egyptians really thought things out. We saw a water well that was dug in the middle of the cave, going down hundreds of feet to reach the water source.

On the way to the caves, there was this view of a castle in the valley. The castle is actually a bed and breakfast you can stay in! Hmmmm.....maybe next time.

The caves stayed cool in the summer and warm in the winter. They could hide from intruding armies and predators in them.

This picture shows the place where they kept their pigeons. They were perfect for a food source because they could go out through the window hole for food and then return back to their little perch on the wall of the cave.

Orvieto is known for their pottery, so after our cave tour, we did a little pottery shopping. They even ship to the United States for a lot less than I thought it would be!!

We got gelato, let Andrew play in an old video arcade we found in a restaurant and drove home!

eating and cooking with Paola

...warning.... if you are uninterested in food, you may want to skip this post.....

When we returned from our cooking class with Velia, I was talking with Paola about what we made (they are friends). I said "there are a few other things I would like to learn such as pizza, tiramisu, ravioli and homemade ricotta cheese." She said "I am not a teacher, but I will teach you whenever you would like."

So, we planned on Sunday night to make pizza. We went to church (an hour away in Terni) (cool experience even if we didn't understand hardly anything) (Andrew said "they even say Amen here too!") (he had to listen a long, long time to hear any words he recognized) and then after visiting a nearby waterfall, came back to Baschi. We were swimming when Paola came over and said whenever we were ready, we could learn.

We went into her kitchen and first made the bread dough for both the pizza, and farm bread. While it was rising, she and Domenico started making cheese. I didn't not realize that to make ricotta cheese, you need to make pecorino cheese first and then you make ricotta with the "leftover" milk. They got milk from their neighbors that day (their own sheep had babies and they could not use their milk yet) so they could teach me. After cooking the milk to the right temperature, they remove the curds and press them in these molds with holes so that the juices come out and only the cheese is left. They then rub the molds in olive oil every day for a few months and they are left with this amazing pecorino cheese! They then heat the milk again and with the strained curds this time we made ricotta cheese. So cool~!

Then it was tiramisu time. I forgot to take pictures of that process, but it was easy and delicious! Lauren is already planning her Italian dinner party! So by now the dough was ready and we headed outside to the brick oven pizza station. We rolled out dough and made focaccia bread and various pizzas. When the novelty of cooking wore off, she told us to sit down and Domenico would serve us our pizza on the patio. It was delightful and delicious!

We had such a great pizza dinner, we decided the next day to eat dinner with them again. We called Paola from our daytrip and asked if we could eat in her restaurant that evening as well. She, of course, said that would be great. When we returned from our long day of sightseeing, we were happy to come home to Paola's cooking. It was one of our best meals...she started with this cool salad that was actually wrapped in a grilled eggplant. It was followed by homemade pasta and then we had these yummy meatballs cooked in zucchini with potatoes. She finished the meal with panna cotta (one of my favorites!) And we didn't even need to get dressed up or go far from our own restrooms! AND she gave me all the recipes!

baschi...

I have talked about our "farmhouse" in Baschi, and it was exactly that - a farmhouse. They have boars, sheep, chicken, olive trees, and a large garden. They work so hard. When Paola isn't tending to her guests (we were the only ones at the moment), she is cooking, cleaning or tending to the farm. Domenico is either helping her around the kitchen or working on some element of the farm or remodeling the rooms. They were the most gracious, kind and warm people.

People would drop by periodically during our stay to swim or eat, and whether she knew they were coming or not, she would make a huge spread of delicious food for them. She would do anything we needed. We just loved relaxing, visiting the hilltowns nearby, swimming and eating. What a great break to the heavy sightseeing!


The boys were fascinated by the boars. The highlight of Andrew's day was feeding them their slop and watching Domenico pull their "piggy tails" straight and waiting for them to instantly curl back up again.

It was great to have the pool to cool off and burn some energy in. This was a daily occurance.

This was the "room" where the kids slept. It had plenty of room and was cozy at the same time.

This is the "room" where Jon and I stayed. Both of the rooms we were in had small kitchens.

This is the kitchen part of our room. It was rustic, but new.

The pool area at sunset was so relaxing.

This is the patio where we ate our breakfast and occasionally, dinner.

Here is the wonderful Paola. One of the reviews I read about this place said "this is the place to go if you always wanted to have relatives in Italy." We sure left this place feeling like we had family in Italy!