Today was, as I mentioned yesterday, the city of Arezzo. I heard someone say it has a population of about 78K people, which is several times larger than Castiglion but not nearly as large as Florence. We took the 9:15 bus over, stopped for coffee and tiny sandwiches (they had the coffee, I had the sandwiches) and went to explore the town's three churches. The first was the Pieve Santa Maria, which had some very nice stained glass including this one, which has bits that remind me of Frank Lloyd Wright's glass.
After, we went to our 11 and 11:30 (the class was split in two) vistits to see the True Cross Fresco in the Church of San Francesco. Photography was strictly forbidden. The frescoes were very interesting and unusual, and were very beautiful.
Afterwards, we headed off for lunch. Seven of us, including our professors went to the small trattoria pictured here. Everyone was pleased with their lunch. I had ravioli stuffed with cheese and spinach served in a creamy sauce. The foccacia served with the meal was fresh with a hint of saltiness and the variety of dishes was intriguing. Besides the usual pizza and pasta, they offer boar, fresh mushrooms, and giant spaghetti noodles called pici.
After lunch, we didn't need to meet back again until our tour of Arezzo's Duomo at three, so we headed back towards the bus station where the lovely La Violetta Gelateria stands. Not a lot of flavors to choose from, but some very unusual ones. Today I had cacio e pere, which is a sort of soft cheese with pear, according to Ann, and my first repeated flavor, frutti di bosco, mixed berries.
After gelato we headed for Duomo San Donato, Arezzo's huge cathedral. It's home to some amazing woodwork, stonework, frescoed ceilings, and a beautiful set of organ pipes (below). The light inside was really low so even switching to my 1.8 lens didn't help entirely. I ended up taking a bunch of photos of the ceiling using the lens on the floor, my remote shutter release, and a one second exposure. The following two images were taken in the same place and light but they're very different due to the exposure length.
The last stop before heading back to the bus and Castiglion was a small shop we'd passed a couple of times before called "The Magic of Oz" (but in Italian) that is home to all sorts of little figurines of faeries and Disney characters. I took a brief look around it with Nick, Ann's younger son, and on the way out, noticed a tic-tac-toe set that matched my collection of little sheepies at home. I asked the shopkeeper if they had any individual ones, and she took me to where they had a single one left. A sheep standing on his hind legs with a shepherd's crook in his hand. Perfect, I thought, for my little flock at home and he was only 4.50 Euros. He's sitting on my shelf in front of my photos of my family.
Dinner tonight wasn't the best but wasn't bad by any metric. Bow-tie pasta in a slightly spicy creamy tomato sauce followed by sauteed vegetables and chicken marsala, which had a lot of really nice mushrooms.
Tomorrow is the beginning of the Renaissance festival! Much fun will be had by all.
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