Old Arezzo

This one I'll let the photos do most of the work. After awhile it's hard to articulate how amazing a thing is. If there ever was a place I traveled to that has touched me it would be Old Arrezzo. It's a walled, Medievel city up the road from, you guessed it, New Arrezzo.

The first thing I was struck by was the simplicity, all reds and browns against the grayish blue sky that we had that day. I could imagine, walking down those streets, how it may have felt to be alive then.
The first stop I made was San Lorenzo which is the oldest of the churches, built before the year 1000. Then Santa Maria in Gradi where I lit another candle for Kathleen.
I then wondered into the sculpture garden of, what appeared to be a community arts center. It was explained to me by my brother and sister-in-law an exhibit of metal sculptures that included a lifesize woman in a burkah whose eyes peered into your soul that brought shivers...count me in. The metal sculptures did not disappoint and my brother did not lie, even though I was prepared for her I shuddered slightly and studied her gaze into me. I sat with the figures and took my notes and moved on, her gaze staying with me. Better than any Japanese horror movie if you ask me.

I stopped in for lunch:

Caprese salad
Antipasti
Chianti
Torta di meringa di limon (not lemon meringue pie as listed on the menu, more of a lemon tart with pine nuts...Italy needs pie)

I walked along the narrow, cobblestone streets imagining what it would be like at that time and what character I would be in that movie. A tough nut of a bar wench with, yea you guessed, a heart of gold. Perhaps falling in love with young knight well beyond my station.

Then, walked along the "Life Is Beautiful" tour, a series of posters in front of various locations of the movie filmed in Arrezzo. Dialogue from the film ran alongside screen shots of Roberto Benigni and Nicoletti Braschi falling in love in that old Italian way, this was turning into a very cinematic trip, just then it began to rain and I ducked into the church where the happy couple had their wedding, years before the tragedies occurred with the Nazis and the camp and such.
The romantic end to that my cinematic movie, however, is that I duck in from out of the rain into the church and I run into a tall but not too tall, dark but too dark and handsome but not too handsome Italian man with a sweet smile. In actuality I walked around, remembered I had an umbrella, left the church then got lost around the narrow, cobblestone streets of Old Arrezzo.