A Day in Cortona

The breakfast that Brian prepared this morning was fabulous as usual and included "spremuta" (freshly squeezed juice) of clementine oranges.  Today has been a special birthday for our son-in-law, Mark, and we decided to spend some time around our cottage this morning in the hope that we might be able to speak with him via skype or mobile phone when he arrived home from work.  We sat in the garden, in beautiful sunshine, with the tortoises and 2 cats, and caught up on a bit of reading, and finally were able to catch the whole family on speaker phone, on a bad line unfortunately, for just a short time as they drove to an Italian restaurant in West Perth. 

After our big day yesterday, we chose to have a quiet day in Cortona today.  We walked up our street, past the park and bumped into a large group of Franciscan monks who were on their way to the church located a few metres from our cottage.  There were a lot of buon giornos exchanged with the locals and we could clearly hear a broad American accent in the middle of the bunch (not sure of the collective noun for monks).

We headed off down the main street and into the piazza to visit the greengrocer, post office, the butcher (for some veal scallopini which was cut using one of those meat slicers usually found in delicatessens), the bakery, the little alimentari, the wine shop and then finally a pasticceria for coffee and una pasta (the coffee was great - the pastry not as good as those we've had elsewhere) and on the way home, a gelateria for "un piccolo cono" of cherry icecream which was sensational.  Oh I will have to spend so many hours at the gym when we get home!

Then back home to put all of our groceries away, spend a bit more time in the garden, have a lovely skype conversation with Peg & Al, and then an afternoon rest before heading off into town again - but this time for some serious shopping.  We went in and out of many of the little shops we've been admiring - buying a few more souvenirs and gifts as we went - a bag shop, paper shop, bookshop, art gallery, clothing shop etc etc - and explored some of the little streets we'd not visited before.  Cortona is such a beautiful town.  

And then we bumped into a large group of nuns - all wearing the traditional long black habits - who were also heading off to "our" church.  Many of them looked so young and it was lovely to watch them walking down the main street in front of us, doing a bit of window shopping as they went, in the windows of some of those beautiful little shops we'd just visited.

Then back home for a pre-dinner glass of pinot griggio with some thin slices of fabulous wild boar salami and a backgammon tournament before I made dinner in our little kitchen - fresh pappardelle (Brian's favourite pasta) topped with some porcini mushrooms, Scaloppini al Vino Rosso, a tossed salad and fresh bread.  Plus a couple of glasses of the Vino Nobile that we bought yesterday - with a special toast to Mark.




"Our" church has obviously been very busy today and the bells have been ringing much more than we've heard on other days.  They must have had a special occasion in their family today too.