4th of July in Castiglion & Cortona!

Gate to Castiglion. I have missed it so much (the town, not this particular gate)!

View from the Loggia

LOVE this view (also from the Loggia)

View from at the top of Castiglion-at the ancient ruins of the Tower

Pathway down to Velvet Underground where we spent many a night!

Way back to Santa Chiara after being at Velvet-can you imagine this after a few too many drinks?

Not sure what the blue flags are for as I don't remember seeing anything liek. Tiffany said there was just a horse race there before I came, so it must be like in Siena where the different parts of town have different flags and their own horse/horserider to root for.

I forgot just how much you had to be in shape to walk in Castiglion

Church right next to Santa Chiara-heard these bells every morning!

Santa Chiara-our home for 3 months in 2006. Oh how I miss it and all of the great times we had!

The tower ruins from outside the city walls

My love- the Coco Palm. Sadly, because of the strike, I was not able to get a gelato fromt he best place on earth :( Guess that means I will have to come back!

View from the bus stop in Cortona-kind of like our bus stops in Houston

Antique store in Cortona

Love this sign! (would have bought it had it been for sale...haha)

I love how all the cats are always out in Italy. I miss this in America and London! (oh, and Cortona is known for its ceramic, so there's a cermaic store behind the sleeping cat).

Art gallery along the main corso. It was built around a well that has been there since the 11th century. I'm sure the building itself was built in the 16th century at least. It had amazing and very pricey art, stationary, and antique Italian maps.

Where I ate my lunch-pizza and my fake lemon ice tea (minus the ice). I miss those teas already!

Church? Museum? don't know....

A church outside of Cortona (just outside what I would call the "back gate" haha). The long pathway down didn't look steep, but I actually had to stop on the way up to catch my breathe. I pretended to be looking at the scenery when some people passed me. London & Houston and their flatness have spoiled me!

I believe this is the church in Under the Tuscan Sun where the young couple gets married, but it is outside of Cortona a little bit, and I'm not sure how you would get there (escalators maybe?), so I've never been inside to confirm (of course they could have used a different church interior in the movie).

View from where I took the escaltors down to (it was a parking lot.haha)

Escalators in Cortona? I knew that they had escalators in Siena because I remember thinking what a great clash of modern and ancient means when we went there on a school field trip 4 years ago. But either we didn't see these in our day trip in 2006 to Cortona (Tiffany and I think we just spent a few hours here), or maybe they are new. Eitherway, there were two stories of them, and this really long and steep one didn't work so you had to walk up the steps anyways.haha


Tiffany was busy with Elia all day Sunday, so she took me to Castiglion early Sunday morning to spend the day doing whatever I like. It felt so great to be back in Castiglion. I remembered exactly where most of our most frequented places were-Santa Chiara, Velvet Underground, the Loggia, our favorite places to get cappucino and pasteries, and even the way out of town to my watercolor class. It definitely felt like just a year ago that we were there and not four years! After some time in Castiglion, I decided to head over to Cortona. I was proud of myself for buying a train ticket and just making it to the train station in time for the next train which stopped in Cortona. Except that it was a Sunday, and for some reason, the trains weren't all running (in small text under most of the trains it said something about festivio-festival). So I hiked it back up to Castiglion (about 10 minutes all up hill), and came back down right before the train without the small side note.

Cortona was better than I remembered. Lots of great art and jewelry galleries. There were more Americans and British peple there than Italians it felt like. I met a girl waiting for the bus (you have to catch a bus from the train station up to into town) from California, a British woman who had moved form London to paint and own her own art gallery, and a girl from New York. Too bad though that as it was "festivo", there were only four buses running all day. So I ended up staying there for 5-6 hours until a bus direct to Castiglion showed up as the Italians hadn't thought to coordinate their bus and train times (i.e. bus picks up at 14:25, trian leaves at 14:20). I got back to Castiglion around 7 and Dorian was nice enough to come and pick me up again. The only thing we said was- Dorian: "Cortona and Castiglion?" Me: "Si". Oh well, a very small (piccolo) improvement from the first ride.