This weekend, I took a trip to Orvieto, a small hill town with lots of white wine and a really fancy church. Reaching Orvieto is a bit tricky – first a train, then a Funicilar up the hill, and finally a minibus to the town center. I only had a few hours, so I stuck to seeing the cathedral, and a meat/cheese/wine snack on the Piazza.
Back in Florence, it’s gotten very hot this past week. Because of electricity prices and a belief that air conditiong is bad for your health, most apartments stay hot.

In central Florence, most of the people you see are tourists, but as you go out in any direction coffee prices drop and most people are local. There are many people from Sardegna, the big island to the west. In Italy, moving to a different city/region is a huge deal. An Italian’s personal identity is hugely based on hometown. Around town, there’s a huge immigrant population as well, mostly from Africa and Eastern Europe. There are large groups of North African men who sell cheap posters on the street to tourists. They lay the posters on the ground in such a way that, when police are spotted, they can swoop all the posters from the ground at once. South Asians sell little children’s toys on the street, and Africans sell purses. It’s a little strange how all the illlegal street selling is completely divided by ethnic group. The last group of people are the Gypsies. Gypsy women are obvious, with long skirts and braided hair.   They beg around the all the major sites.

I also can now apparently speak well enough that shopkeepers and waiters don’t answer me in English. This was a big hurdle before.

I’ve got two weeks left in Italy,  which doesn’t seem like very much time.  But I’ll be ready to get back to the US.  I specifically miss air conditioning, Texmex, and peanut butter. I’ve seen all the major museums, so I’ll spend the rest of the time finding the smaller ones.  This weekend, I took a bike ride around Oltrearno, the part of Florence on the other side of the river.  I saw the Bardini gardens, which is a relatively small shade garden, very pretty, with great Florence views.  The Coffeehouse at the Bardini actually sold coffee, unlike the Coffeehouse at the larger Boboli gardens.  Boboli Coffeehouse is just a building that USED to sell coffee…very deceptive.  Then I walked over to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which is the famous place to view Florence.  Unfortunately, it was mostly a parking lot, not the pretty piazza on a hill I was expecting.

I also stopped by the Galileo science museum, which exhibits old scientific instruments.   Also, terrifying wax models of pregnancy and pregnancy complications.  Galileo’s actual finger is displayed as well.

Sunday, I took a bus to see San Gimignano and the Monteriggioni medieval festival.  San Gimignano was very small pretty, but had way too many tourists.  Monteriggioni is an extreeeemely tiny town. It seems like more of a medieval fort, with a big stone wall.  The entire town was participating in the festival, everyone dressed, and playing the part.  Dante walked around reciting, etc. The finally was a pantomime play of St. George and the Dragon entirely performed on stilts.          Then fireworks shot from the town walls.

My favorite things to draw in Florence are statues!

First is “Rape of the Sabine Women”. It’s not the best subject matter, but the statue has so much movement.

I arrived Saturday in Florence, after a pretty long trip from Montepulciano.  I got lost looking for the hotel and ended up just taking a cab.  I had the most relaxing day possible at this hotel.  I mostly napped and watched TV.  For dinner, I walked around the neighborhood until I found a grocery to buy Pecorino fresco, olives, and bread. On my walk, I found a Ferrari convention, and Amerigo Vespucci’s house.  I got a glass of wine at the hotel bar, and collapsed on the bed. In morning I took another cab to my new homestay apartment, which is very nice and about a 10 minute walk to the Duomo. Since school doesn’t start until 9:30, I may start doing morning walks around the city, before it gets too hot and full of tourists.  I played tourist today and walked and the city for a few hours, stopping to do some drawing outside the Uffizi gallery.  Tomorrow I’m going to the Palio at Siena!

I’m going to miss Montepulciano so much.  I’m already getting nostalgic and I still have a whole week of lessons left.  Right now in my class it’s only me and an Irish university student.  This week is mostly conversation, but also a review of all the grammar I need to still polish. This drawing is of a typical alley here.  There’s a convenient park and bench at the top, so I had a comfortable place to sit and draw.  First I did an ink painting, then outlined in pen, then shaded with colored pencils.

Today I had lunch at a cute cafe with friends from school. “handmade gnocchi with pesto” was handwritten at the bottom of the menu. So irresistible, 3 out of 4 of us got it.  It was perfect, pillowy gnocchi with lots of basil pesto.  After lunch I did a quick ink painting at the Piazza Grande.   I think I may temporarily have artist’s block – it’s starting to get tiring to sketch.  It’s currently frustrating because I’m trying to find a style I want to stick with.

After drawing I walked to a friend’s apartment for wine and sitting in the garden. Hard life.  It eventually started to look stormy, so I headed out.  On the way, I talked to the owner of the apartments, Signora Stuart.  She’s very Italian for sure, I’m not sure of the story behind the name. As far as I could tell, the Palazzo Stuart was built by a Scot who fell in love with Montepulciano. Anyway, she was on her way to the bookstore, and gave me a lift in her car as far as the main traffic circle.  This cut my 20 minute walk down to 5.  This was especially good for me after the 2 glasses of white wine I’d just finished.

I found an overlook with benches and trees this week.  Importantly, it’s on the east side of town, so when I’m drawing in the afternoon there’s shade.  For this post, I’ll start with a picture of what I was looking at, then show a few intermediate steps of the drawing, then the final product.

The view from the overlook

The line drawing

I finished the line drawing on site, but then I was chased downhill by some thunderstorm-type clouds.

Eek, so much green!

This is when I’m finished the base coat of colored pencils.  It’s all still very light, and there’s no shading.  Basically, no black colored pencil yet.

All done!

The greens in this photo are a little dulled for some reason.  The red areas on the hillside are poppies, and the yellow areas are ginestra.  Most of the difference between this picture and the last are from the addition of blacks, more forceful coloring, and using layers of related colors.

Other interesting things today:

A shopkeeper at the store where I sometimes buy an afternoon snack (100 grams of fresh pecorino) asked me to address her as “Tu” instead of respectful “Lei” form today.

The tourists are tired.

Romeo can’t even look outside.

Paulanka wants back in.

It’s OK in the shade though.

I accidentally took a picture of myself through my water bottle.  I think it looks pretty neat.

Street seen from the steps of the music school

This is a drawing of the view down the hill, done from the steps of the music academic  right down the street from the Piazza Grande.  Across the street is an antique bookstore, the civic museum, and an art gallery.   The church is the background is the Chiesa di San Francesco, where there’s a great bar (next to the church, not in it) and a scenic overlook.  Drawing this took several days.  The first day it rained, and I didn’t get much done. The second day I finished the line drawing.  The third day I decided to go back to do an inkwash.  I went each of these times around 4pm, because is when the orchestra at the music academy practices.  Unfortunately, this is also the time in the afternoon when it likes to rain, so I kept having to book it down the hill (I don’t like being at the top of the town when there’s lightning nearby).

A walk in  Campagna:

On the walk through the country, Montepulciano in the background

Today I went on a hike with people from the school through the countryside to Montechiello.  This is a very small town of about 400 people  about 7 kilometers from Montepulciano.  You could say that it was both very hot and very hilly.  The worst part was when we were one hill away, about level in elevation with the town, but still with a valley to descend to and and equivalent hill to walk back up.  But it was definitely worth the walk.  Especially since we had a van to drive us back.

Pigeon with shadow at Montechiello

I took a picture of the main church, and realized later that I’d caught a pigeon making  perfect “bird shaped” shadow on the wall.  So far this is one of my favorite photos from the trip!

The only other exciting thing today was that I finally bought a Italian-English dictionary.  It’s definitely geared toward people learning English, with a large section on English grammar.   I’m going to actually spend some time reading the dictionary.

Ciao

The view at Pienza

On Saturday I took the local bus to Pienza, a small town about 20 minutes away from Montepulciano. I managed to misremember the route to the bus station from the house, and took a really hilly alternate way.

The historic district in Pienza is much smaller than the one in Montepulciano.  It was easily seen in a few hours.  I would say Pienza definitely has the feeling of a much smaller town, and is very tidy – every house has some kind of flowers planted.  The main distinguisher has to be the number of Pecorino cheese shops.

Some things just don't translate well into English

Also, there were an extreme number of swallows flying around.  Which I guess is good for keeping down bugs, but was very noisy.

I found the the view I wanted to draw right away.  I stood leaning on the stone wall of the overlook, close to the Via dell’Amore.  I think I got a little more tan on my left side from the sun rising in the east.   Not to much interesting happened during the drawing. The number of tourists increased drastically after around 11 am.  I lost track of time for sure during  this drawing.  It was probably from the sun, definitely should have drunk more water during thie morning.  Since I was feeling like I’d been outside in the sun too long, I took the earlier bus back to Montepulciano, and this time took the less hilly route back.  Then I had a nice footwarmer.

This is Paulanka

There is no Italian term for Golden Retriever.   A lot of new things that need terms default to the English word.  Paulanka’s current issue is that wild wheat keeps getting stuck in his fur and poking him 🙁 He is very happy when you find one and pull out.

The Arch

It has actually rained every day since I got here.  I drew this while I was completely stuck up in the town.   The walk to the house is just long enough that rain really discourages leaving the city.  I had started the day at the top of the town, at the Piazza Grande, but descended at the first thunder.  The top of a hill town is not the place to be in a thunderstorm.  I went to a cafe, but didn’t want to overstay my welcome, since they were busy with customers coming in from the rain.  I found shelter under a large overhang in front of a bank.  It’s about a 30′ by 30′ shelter at the front of the building, under the overhand of the 2nd story.  Or as Italians would call it, the “1st story”.  Confusing.

The arch was the obvious thing to draw from this post, and I decided to make in a practice for perspective.  With a city build on a slope, most things have pretty extreme perspective distortion.

Down through the arch to the right is the entrance to the language school. Immediately downhill from that is the “Chiolatta” children’s clothes store.  From a distance it looks deceptively like a chocolate store.  But alas. To the left is basically a Tuscan tschotsky store.  They have a staircase that goes down to an Etruscan tomb.  I’m not sure if this is actually an Etruscan tomb, or just a cellar.  The other claim to fame of this store is that they were in a shot in the Twilight movie.  I’ve only seen two references to Twilight in Montepulciano – here, and  also an old advertisement for a “Vampire” fixed price meal.  From what I could tell, every item was red in some way, Bruschetta with tomatoes, pasta and red sauce, and red wine. I’m really glad the Twilight references are kept to a minimum, considering this was a major setting in the film.  Which now I guess I have to see.

I stayed under the pavilion about an hour.  During this time I 1 )failed to give directions in Spanish, and 2) talked to a couple from Oklahoma about the weather (rainy and cold).

As it was getting on 7pm, I had to start making my way back to the house for dinner at 8.  I decided to kind of hop between stores to avoid the rain. I stopped at a small food store, and met the older lady behind the counter.  I stopped at one of the wine stores, but left right away, since it was packed with vinotourists.  About 50 feet from the city wall gate, a random guy joined me under my umbrella.  I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but I think there where 3 people together, but only one umbrella.  It’s pouring at this point, so as I’m walking close to the lucky man and woman with the one umbrella, the third guy jokingly hops under my umbrella.  He left when we got to the gate, and I’m sure I didn’t get pickpocketed in this encounter.

I waited for a little less rain, then walked halfway downhill to the big grocery store.  I just puttered around a bit, then walked the rest of the way the the house.  It had rained for 4 hours straight, but had gone to just a drizzle by the time I left.

The words of the day would be “Piove” –  It’s raining, and “Freddo” – coooooooold.