The Cherry Guy and Other Confusions

As my houseguest had a rental car, we took the opportunity to get out of the city for a while this weekend. We spent a day in Arezzo, home of Vasari and setting of various parts of Life is Beautiful. Charming little city. We visited Vasari’s house (one of my old teachers said you can’t call yourself a well-read person until you’ve read his Lives of the Artists. I’ve only dipped into them, so I’m not qualified yet, but I do like him and his sympathetic descriptions of his fellow painters and sculptors). After visiting various museums and frescoes (lots of Piero della Francesca), I was on the brink of starvation and heatstroke, saved only by what tasted like the best pizza in the world sold by the only pizzeria that appeared to be open after two.

Now, here’s what we thought was the Roman anfiteatro.










Here’s the real anfiteatro that we discovered later. P. was a bit dubious about picture A. being the real deal from the start, as befits someone who used to teach history in college, so we revisited the map and happened upon this much more impressive version.















Here’s the carabiniera who, if she understands English, probably enjoyed a hearty laugh at our expense later as she was standing right by us while we were looking at the pseudo anfiteatro and taking pictures of it.















We then visited San Gimignano on the way home, which was lovely. Medieval towers galore. And much cheaper tourist junk than in Firenze, for future reference. AND, this:











Yep, possibly the best gelato in the world. We can testify that the ananas, chocolate, pistachio, and kiwi deserved the title alone.

We were pretty close to the Chianti road, so thought it would be nice to drive back that way. It should be noted that at this point we had a GPS and three maps with us. (Admittedly, the GPS wasn’t really functioning). Anyway, using the maps and street signs, I navigated us to a roundabout at Poggibonsi, where there was a sign pointing to the Chianti road. We paused by a man selling cherries to check the map, and followed the sign.

About ten minutes later we found ourselves back at the exact same spot. Turns out the sign led to a t-junction with no signs that wasn’t on our admittedly not-very-detailed map. No problem, we thought. We’ll just take the other direction at the T this time.

I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say that we ended up back in front of the cherry seller three more times, got to know the surrounding area of Poggibonsi better than I had ever dreamed, and never found the Chianti road that day. There was also the point when P said “you know, if the cherry guy speaks English, we could ask…”

“I am NOT asking for directions! We have maps.”

Pause to reflect on gender identities.

As it happens, we found another very lovely route back to Florence, had a delicious dinner (seriously, how can they make things like peas so incredibly more-ish), and on Sunday afternoon we took a picnic and found the Chianti road from the other direction. And it really is gorgeous. I’ve got pictures to prove it.




But I am a little annoyed that I’ve hiked the Black Mountains in Wales and the High Uintahs armed with compasses and maps (and, admittedly, friends with senses of direction) without getting lost, but couldn’t find my way round one of the more popular tourist desitnations in Western Europe with street signs.