MILWAUKEE-NYC-ITALY-GREECE AND A DAY IN LONDON BLOG POST EIGHT

FATTORIA ARMENA

For us saying good-bye to Fattoria Armena is always the saddest part of our journey. We started out traveling there when our daughter was three. We had been invited to stay with a client who had rented a villa in Umbria and after our stay we wanted to spend a couple of weeks on our own. We contacted the same rental agency as our clients and poured through their list of available places to rent.

There was some sort of fate that drew us to Armena. Stefania and Alessandro had just begun transitioning from their actuarial jobs in Siena into opening their Agriturismo on the farm that had been in Alessandro's family since it was built back in the 1500's purportedly by the architect Baldassare Peruzzi.

Since her birth our daughter had come out of the womb like a dolphin with a strong connection with the animal world. There wasn't a cow or a goat or a snake she wouldn't adore and want to pet or hold. It was those pictures and the Pidgin English description of the animals on the farm that made us say okay and plunk down our deposit for that first visit to Armena.

We rented a car to get us from Umbria to Tuscany and give us the flexibility of traveling around and into the beautiful hill towns rising out of Tuscany's valleys. The road leading to Armena from the south diverts you at a certain point off of the main artery to the north, the A1, and then onto a series of very narrow and extremely windy country roads that left me with white knuckle driving and Emmy with an acute case of motion sickness. The very last part of the journey to the top of the hill that is Armena is a dirt road pocked with ruts and water worn rivulets and holes. It's barely wide enough for one car to pass let alone two going in opposite directions, but it's lined with forests and cypress trees providing a series of beautiful views as you ascend to the top that dead ends at the Fattoria.

That first trip to the farm was anything but luxurious. The pool was above ground and the place was still very much a working farm with all the necessary out buildings needed to keep the farm running but Emmy was in love with every dog that slobbered over her giggling face, every bunny she could hold in her little arms and especially every horse she could sneak an apple to without reprimand.

The farm's architecture is divided into two main buildings: one having been the original home and the other a combination of living quarters and stables for the livestock and horses. The stables had been converted into two apartments one on top of the other with the bottom one containing two bedrooms and one bath and the upper housing three bedrooms and two baths. We rented the lower.

The farm is now much more luxurious but without pretention.

Pomegranate trees are mature and laden with fruit.

It now has a breathtaking infinity pool.

Poolside lunches are a common occurrence for guests.

The vineyards and olive groves have matured and they've added on another apartment.

This is where we stay now. After so many trips back to Armena, we've now lost count of how many times;

it's in this apartment that we now make our beds.

We've met friends for life on our stays at the farm and try to coordinate our stays with families who have also fallen in love with this heaven on a hill.

But as much as it is now the beauty that draws us here,

the real reason and the reason from our very first hello on our very first visit nineteen years ago was and is the Saraceni family. There has never been a greater set of hosts starting out with Stefania and Alessandro and now their sons Jacapo and Giulio.

If you travel once to the farm you'll be treated as royalty.

If you return you're treated as family.

This is not meant as a review but as our love letter to them.

MILWAUKEE-NYC-ITALY-GREECE AND A DAY IN LONDON BLOG POST SEVEN

FIRENZE

The one and only day trip we planned in advance was to Florence, my mother's namesake city. Unfortunately this year the city and my mother have taken a hit due to the hurricane with the same moniker that left so much devastation and death along the East coast of our own beloved country. Our personal tragedy with Florence which certainly doesn't compare to the devastation of the hurricane was a disappointing visit to the city named Florence that we'd hoped would be more welcoming and much less crowded. In our plan we had picked the middle of the week as the most likely day to see the least amount of tourists. We hadn't been to Firenze in a long time. The last time was when Emmy was about four, every time after that our vacations revolved around her school schedule. That meant summer travel and that meant we were going at the height of the tourist season.

With the advice and guidance of Stefania we drove to a tram stop with parking just outside the city proper and took a new light rail from there right into the city center. At 1.50 Euros per person it was the simplest part of our trip.

No matter how many tourists might be converging on their own personal mecca you can't avoid a stop at the Duomo. Getting elbowed or run over by a group of tourists trying to follow a guide with a pink umbrella or the Japanese flag on a stick hoisted in the air was not something we were keen to do. We felt it might be safer with less risk of being trampled if we went in September once the season had cooled down a bit. Nah, those pesky tourists were still out in force if perhaps a bit older and more dangerous. Now we had to watch out for walkers and those infernal walking sticks that look like a pair of ski poles.

I tried to solve my problem by shooting over their heads with limited success.

Still there's no denying that the architectural beauty of the building and use of pattern and repetition are dazzling if you can look high enough to see it.

It's also where you'll find the angels praying for everyone to go home and let Florence breathe for a while.

So on this trip back to the city on the Arne we found it was infinitely better to see the dome of the Duomo reflected in the window of the rooftop cafe at the Uffizi Gallery rather than at its foot in the midst of the hordes of tourists.

Visiting the Uffizi was our main reason for going to Florence. In all the times we've been to Tuscany we could never quite get it together to make ticket reservations  for entrance into this acclaimed museum.  Of course, you can buy "day of" tickets but that requires standing in two very long lines with very long waits. We're clearly too impatient for using the bulk of any vacation day to stand in a line. We won't even do that in New York where line standing is a sporting activity for many people and when you see that even the clergy need to stand in line for those tickets you know you did the right thing by buying in advance.

On our way to the Uffizi you pass through the Piazza della Signoria where you can find a bevy of Renaissance sculptures by some of the most famous sculpters of the time. A copy of Michelangelo's David is there making a ticket to the Galleria dell'Accademia where the original stands a moot point unless the copy is too Disneyland for you.

There are also works by Cellini, Bandinelli and Ammannati in the Piazza making for more things to look at for free and a whole bunch more tourists.

Once inside the Uffizi the first gallery we descended into housed a temporary exhibit by the artist, Fritz Koenig. I knew nothing of his work and none of us recognized his name. The first few rooms were deceptive and highly erotic, the kind of place that made you very uncomfortable walking through with your daughter. But the hardest room to walk into was very near the end. It showcased the bronze globe that once sat in the center of the fountain between the twin towers in lower Manhattan. It was a working replica of the globe with a single spotlight. Behind the globe was a set of three video screens showing the planes crashing into the towers, people jumping from the buildings and the final collapse of the towers. Had we known I don't think we would have walked into the exhibit. I couldn't shake those images we witnessed first hand on the morning of that devastating event and I still can't rip them from my mind now.

It was a relief to walk out of that exhibit and then up to the floors above where beauty prevailed. There were too many glorious images to share them all, so similar to the Borghese post I'm showing what I saw without comment. Because once again the images are far more beautiful than any words I could come up with to describe their beauty:








BUSTS

PAINTINGS

PEOPLE

SCULPTURES

And when in any Italian city nothing tops off a day like a lick of gelato.

MILWAUKEE-NYC-ITALY-GREECE AND A DAY IN LONDON BLOG POST SIX

PIENZA AND SAN QUIRICO D'ORCIA

God may have had Sunday as his day of rest but we took most of Tuesday to sit and relax in the untypical hot weather of an unusual mid-September. We waited until late in the afternoon to take off on a little excursion to Pienza before we headed out to San Quirico to meet up with Stefania and Alessandro for dinner.

Pienza is a strikingly beautiful town. So beautiful that Franco Zeffirelli chose it as the backdrop for his gorgeous version of Romeo and Juliet back in 1968.

The town was renovated by Fifteenth century Pope Pius II who became the Disney of his time. He commissioned the architect, Rossellino to renovate the town in the image of the ideal city. Add to that the extraordinary hand of  the movie's art director and you have the UNESCO fairytale city of Pienza today.

This year was particularly significant as Pienza celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Zeffirelli's movie.

A walk through the streets of Pienza offered temptation after temptation from shops filled with lavender that tried to draw you in by your nose with the hypnotizing pull of the fragrant flower

to the pungent smell of the shops selling the local and internationally famous Pecorino cheese

then to the scent of delicious salumerias with their hanging salamis and salt cured prosciuttos. We stayed away from the wines.

Of course no window shopping is complete for us without looking at some clothing. Emmy spotted this shop with locally made dresses and capes from vintage matelassé tablecloths and bedspreads fit for a very special occasion.

There are times when you just don't plan things out correctly. We thought if we left for Pienza around four in the afternoon we'd be able to hit San Quirico just about right for our eight-thirty dinner with Stefania and Alessandro. When your timing is off in Tuscany you have to find a way to make due and that's pretty easy. First, you wait for one more spectacular display of nature; that evening it was the clouds that put on show for us at no charge.

After we had gotten back into our car and continued on into San Quirico we did a little house hunting in a "what if" fashion when we found this fortification on the city's outer wall that had been turned into a house and put on the market. Seems we New Yorkers are not the only ones stuck with vertical living.

We then did a little shopping but found this public mouse art much more interesting.

With still more time to kill we found a seat at a café in the city square and had spritzes that came with a small plate of appetizers

from one of the most amazing and interesting bartenders we've had the luck of meeting anywhere, even in New York!

We finally made it to dinner at yet another spectacular restaurant where al fresco dining was once again accompanied by a gentle breeze and great conversation in pidgin English and Italian along with a lot of sign language.

The highlight of dinner was Emmy ordering a Fiorentina steak that ended up being so large we were able to take what she couldn't eat back to Armena and the next day make pasta for six.

How do you beat this? Can't!