The cutest city on Earth

Saturday, 30 June

I'm a traveling woman and I've made a lot of stops . . .

Okay, okay, I'll stop singing.  To celebrate the return of wi-fi, we have a lot of photos today (yay!).    Today we left Tuscany.  I've had photos of the surroundings, but not the apartment.  So, a photo of the main gathering space.  The loft is Joshua's bedroom, the kitchen is on the left, the dining room in the middle.  The living room is further over to the left, off the camera and the bedrooms and bathrooms are off to the right.

Here's another view from the living room area.  The door on the right leads to Annie and Shelby's bedroom (with an attached bathroom) and the door on the left leads to our bedroom and the main bathroom.  The main bathroom only had a tub, so we used the shower of Annie and Shelby's little bathroom.  You can see the beamed ceiling; above that are clay bricks and the walls are plaster.

This is a photo of the apartment from the pool area.  Ours is the apartment at the top.  The big windows in front are the bedrooms.   There is a staircase on the left that leads up to the door.  And you can see the lavender and the creepy Italian trees.

Today we drove for about an hour and stopped at two cute little towns:  Orvietto and Civita.  Orvietto was nice, it had a pretty Duomo and the usual tourist shops and art galleries.  It had a lot of ceramics shops, of painted and glazed terra cotta--very nice and some was very creative.  We saw lamps made out of clay with cut outs.  Both hanging lamps and sconces.  An electrical cord was inserted through a cut out and a very cute lamp created.  Some had the part holding the bulb secured, but not all and some of the sconces had little metal loops to be hung on the wall.  Hmmm--Dowling art class??

A shop with painted and glazed tiles around the door and the name sign

Street scene

The Duomo

Then to Civita.  The first "C" is pronounced with a /ch/.  This is absolutely the cutest city.  It is a pain to get to--but wow on the cuteness scale.  You go down stairs, then down a steep road to the bridge, which halfway across goes upward steeply to get up to the city.

The town of Civita

Just inside the entrance

Isn't it just too cute?  It was hot, otherwise we would've spent longer there.

Then we continued on, driving south of Rome, through Naples and through Sorrento to the village we are staying in.  From Naples on, it was crazy.  Bumper to bumper traffic, wall to wall people,  and seriously crazy motorcycle and scooter drivers.  Even the locals think they're unsafe.  They weave in and out of traffic and even pass buses in the oncoming lane around curves.  We almost crashed into several of them.  I noticed that they all wear helmets and found that it is the law in Italy.  I know they keep trying to pass a helmet law in Minnesota, but the motorcyclists see it as taking away their freedom--even if they already wear a helmet.  I saw one passenger on a motorcycle even holding a baby in his arms!!  That is wrong in just so many ways.  It is not very hot here yet  (it was evening when we arrived), but being on the ocean, it is very humid.

This weekend is a holiday, one of the feast days is Monday so there were firecrackers and fireworks going off all night.

Our apartment is nice.  Three bedrooms, two bathrooms.  A small dining room/living room combination, an eat-in kitchen, two balconies, and a rooftop terrace.  The terrace has a table with four chairs, umbrella, and two deck chairs.  Each of the balconies has a table with two chairs.  Despite the rule that says to not move the furniture around, we will need to take one of the balcony chairs up to the roof to eat up there.  You can see the ocean from our bedroom and from the roof--it is just a bit hazy.