Today we had a beautiful, southwestern, fall drive of about 2 hours to the walled town of Volterra. It dates back to Estruscan times! One of the original gates still stands.
Outside side
Inside side - we enjoyed interacting with the construction guys who were taking down scaffolding on a house to the right. They literally drilled anchors into the stone to erect & then filled in holes upon removal.
This building was the model for the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence:
This area is known for its alabaster craft. We walked through this coop - beautiful work:
This is a workshop that wasn't open - looked like maybe hadn't been opened for a long time!
We also visited several churches:
Outside of this one
Inside of same!
We opted not to pay the €12 each to enter the Roman amphitheatre so we peeked over the gate. Then walking by on our way to the car, we discovered we could see it all!
Sunny days are great for walking around but play havoc with taking photos! Too bright, shadows, etc.
Gate we left through
You can see how thick the walls are
The pigeons have their own little hidey-holes!
A look at the outside wall
We proceeded home via a different route than we took going and made it home with no turn arounds! No wait, that's not true. At one roundabout, the sign to Firenze had gotten turned which we realized very quickly as we reached a church parking lot!! And, we did go around a couple of roundabouts twice just to verify we were on the right track! The countryside going and coming changed quite dramatically - from vineyards to olive trees, to forests, mountain, to plowed land, valleys, then back to olive trees and vineyards!! Here was one spectacularly colored vineyard:
Now, the whole day was fabulous but the highlight for me was this morning on our way to Volterra. Suddenly I yell 'Stop' and since we were behind a tour bus creeping around switchback curves
(though this particular spot was a straight shot) and there was a wide enough area to safely pull over, Sarah did so!! I saw this sign:
It is the Camino in Italy!!! And to make it even more special, two groups of Italian pilgrims were just reaching this point! They spoke English so Sarah & I chatted a bit. Sarah took a picture with her camera but I was too excited to think of doing so! And we don't have a cable to transfer off her memory card so just landmark photos:
The crosswalk for pilgrims to get safely across busy road - even has street lights!
This is where they came from -
This is where I met them with our car down by the crossing - safely parked so Sarah was able to join us on the Way!
So a wonderful experience on a spectacular fall day!!
I love alabaster. So cool that you saw the El Camino in Italy and Sarah was able to walk a little of it with you!
ReplyDelete