tuscany # 2-6 ~ la dolce vita
Monday, September 21, 2009 at 08:05AM 
Bridge ruins ~ Bagnoro
il Bacio, aka - the Kiss (on the right)
The interior of il BacioWhile in Tuscany the wife and I stayed in a quaint little cottage (1 of 2) - il Bacio (the Kiss) - on the grounds of an old olive orchard / farm house high in the hills overlooking Etruscan Arezzo - Arezzo is approx. 100 km south of Florence. My brother and his wife stayed in the other cottage at the same place.
And when I say, "high in the hills", man, do I mean high - the drive up, about a mile, was steep (massive understatement), one-small-Italian-car narrow, corkscrew-twisted with non-existent shoulders that were, in fact, cliffs. At no point was your line of sight up or down the road more than 40-50' max (but typically less). I kinda thought of the road as a challenge, my brother thought of it as a life threatening ordeal.
In any event, the bridge ruins - on which the former roadway extended only 50' on either side of the archway and then dropped off to the surrounding landscape - was our daily portal into and out of the hills. The view pictured here is looking back at the hills - a right hand turn at the stone farm in the distance is where the drive up to our cottage begins.
The drive up was so steep in parts that on one trip up (with the 4 of us on board) when I had to slow down upon coming around a bend and suddenly encountering a wild boar standing in the road, the revs dropped to a point where the car stalled. In order to get rolling again, my brother and his wife had to get out of the car, I had to get the revs up to 3500 rpm, pop the clutch and burn some rubber just to get moving again.
All of which was/is my kind of fun. Although, mama mia, if we had rented one of these Fiats ...
But alas, ours was a more sensible model Fiat.
Reader Comments (1)
What a beautiful part of the world and it sounds like you are having an excellent adventure. I was privileged to be stationed in Italy for 18 months back in the late 70s while in the USAF. I enjoyed the people, customs and countryside. beautiful