Lover of Wine – Travel along on our adventures – DAVID & JANEEN

The last couple of days have been enjoyable. We spent an afternoon in the City Center of Perugia having a lovely lunch and then walked around. It seems it was a huge chocolate celebration with booths and producers (Perugian, Bacio, Linde) EVERYWHERE.

Fortunately we had a nice lunch and were not the least bit tempted by all the treats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After getting back to our room we had a couple of adult beverages in the hotel lounge and made decisions on where to be over the next several days. It was decided that Italy was over and it was time for France. So, today we drove from Perugia to Genoa, Italy.

 

Genoa is on the water – well the Ligurian sea – and is quite beautiful. We asked the front desk of our hotel where to go for some seafood and they directed us to the Boccadasse area, about 3 or 4 Km from the hotel with a profusion of fish themed restaurants. Across the street from the Hotel is the train station so finding a cab wasn’t a problem and off we went.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After we arrived, the restaurant I had looked at on Trip Advisor was closed, of course, but we found a lovely little spot overlooking the bay and had a delightful seafood lunch.

 

After lunch we walked a bit, found a cab and got back to our hotel only to be distracted by the Arco della Vittoria – a monument to the Genoese who died in WWI.

Now we are back in our room, relaxing getting ready for a drive tomorrow first to Nieve (where will visit with a guide we had for Piedmont Wines 4 years ago) and then off to Chambery France on our way to the Loire Valley.

 

It was time to hit a garden, or in this case, a showcase of Fountains. So, we packed up and headed towards Tivoli and a visit to the Villa d’Este. After cruising around to find parking, we finally found a spot and headed to the Villa with a lunch break prior to going on our tour. The Villa is really a combination of a nice “home” and a very large garden with multiple water features. We skipped the interior of the Villa and headed straight to the garden.

 

The Villa d’ Este is a 16th-century villa in Tivoli, near Rome,  famous for its terraced hillside Italian Renassance garden  and especially for its profusion of  fountains  It is now an Italian state museum, and is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.

The Villa was commissioned by Cardinal Impolite II d’Este  (1509–1572), second son of Alfonso I d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara and grandson of Pope Alexander VI, along with Lucrezia Borgia.  The Este family had been lords of Ferrara since 1393. He was a lavish patron of the arts, supporting among others the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini,  the musician Pierluigi da Palestrina and the poet  Torquato Tasso. While his income was enormous, he was always in debt.

Canals were dug and two hundred meters of underground pipes were laid to carry the water from the artificial mountain under the oval fountain to the rest of the garden. Following the aesthetic principles of the Renaissance, the garden was carefully divided into regular units, or compartments, each thirty meters across, laid out along a longitudinal median axis, with five lateral axes.

The plans for the villa itself were carried out under the direction of the Ferrarese architect-engineer Alberto Galvani, court architect of the Este.

Between 1850 and 1896, the Villa was owned by Cardinal Gustav von Hohenlohe, who restored the dilapidated villa and the ruined and over grown gardens, which now appealed to the romantic sentiments of the period. The villa once again attracted artists, musicians and writers. The composer Franz Liszt made several visits between 1865 and 1885, and wrote two pieces of music, Les Jeux d’Eau a la Villa d’Este and I Cipressi.

After the First World War, the villa was acquired by the Italian State, which began a major restoration in 1922. The famous water organ, which had not functioned for many years, was restored and now plays again each day for visitors.

The Courtyard is placed where the original cloister of the convent was located. It was constructed in 1566–67, and is surrounded by a gallery. The centerpiece of the courtyard is the Fountain of Venus, the only fountain in the Villa that retains its original appearance.

The fame and glory of the Villa d’Este was above all established by its extraordinary system of fountains; fifty-one fountains and nymphaeums, 398 spouts, 364 water jets, 64 waterfalls, and 220 basins, fed by 875 meters of canals, channels and cascades, and all working entirely by the force of gravity, without pumps.

The garden plan is laid out on a central axis with subsidiary cross-axes, refreshed by some five hundred jets in fountains, pools and water troughs. The Aniene, which is partly diverted through the town, a distance of a kilometer, supplies the water and, originally, by the Rivellese spring, which supplied a cistern under the villa’s courtyard (now supplied by the Aniene too). The garden is now part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani.

You can see from the pictures were are LOTS of fountains – and many with interesting sculptures and water spouts. After walking through the area for a couple of hours we headed up through the Garden back to the Plaza above for a Gelato and to continue our drive to Perugia.

 

 

 

 

We have often heard about Paestum where there are some wonderful Greek and Roman ruins – some of them in much better condition than in other parts of the ‘old world’. So, we took ourselves there to see. We arrived after a nice lunch in a small pizza place along the side of the road then just walked in to the ruins.

 

 

No ticket required – however, we didn’t have any guidebook information of idea of what we were looking at. Fortunately there were key signs placed around the area giving you sufficient information to get some idea of what you were looking at. We recognized Hera, Athena and Apollo as gods for the temples, or maybe the big one was for Neptune…still not enough knowledge about the Greek colony that initially founded the trading city.

Both Republican and Imperial Romans added their own touches, or at least covered with dignity the old and declared a new.

The day was beautiful – clear skies, not too warm and limited number of people wandering around.

 

Paestum was a major ancient Greek  city on the coast of southern Italy. The ruins of Paestum are famous for their three ancient Greek temples in the Doric orderr, dating from about 600 to 450 BC, which are in a very good state of preservation. The city walls and amphitheater are largely intact, and the bottom of the walls of many other structures remains, as well as paved roads.

Much the most celebrated features of the site are the three large temples in the Archaic version of the Greek Doric order, dating from about 550 to 450 BC. All are typical of the period, with massive colonnades having a very pronounced entasis (widening as they go down), and very wide capitals resembling upturned mushrooms. Above the columns, only the second temple of Hera retains most of its entablature,  the other two having only the architrave  in place.

These three temples were dedicated to Hera, Athena, and Poseidon (Juno, Minerva, and Neptune to the Romans). The two temples of Hera are right next to each other, while the Temple of Athena is on the other side of the town center. Paestum is far from any sources of good marble resulting in the temples having had few stone reliefs, perhaps using painting instead. The whole ancient city of Paestum covers an area of approximately 300 acres. It is only the 61 arcs that contain the three main temples and the other main buildings that have been excavated. The other areas remain on private land and have not been excavated. The city is surrounded by defensive walls that still stand.

The central area is completely clear of modern buildings since the Middle Ages. Although much stone has been stripped from the site, large numbers of buildings remain detectable by their footings or the lower parts of their walls, and the main roads remain paved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first Temple of Hera, built around 550 BC by the Greek colonists, is the oldest surviving temple. Eighteenth-century archaeologists named it “The Basilica” because some mistakenly believed it to be a Roman building. The temple is wider than most Greek temples, probably because there are two doors and a row of seven columns running centrally inside the cella or inner sanctuary, an unusual feature. This may reflect a dual dedication of the temple. Having an odd number of columns, here nine, across the shorter sides also is very unusual; there are eighteen columns along the longer sides. This was possible, or necessary, because of the two doors, so that neither has a view blocked by a column.

The second Temple of Hera was built around 460–450 BC, just north of the first Hera Temple. The columns do not have the typical 20 flutes on each column, but have 24 flutes. The Temple of Hera II also has a wider column size and smaller intervals between columns.

On the highest point of the town, some way from the Hera Temples and north of the center of the ancient settlement is the Temple of Athena .  It was built around 500 BC. The architecture is transitional, being partly in the Ionic style and partly early Doric.

After viewing the various main buildings we walked through the “town” looking at the foundations and remaining walls of the structures. One had a particularly nice inlay floor we didn’t find out if it was original or added sometime over the last couple thousand years.

 

The last several days have been interesting – altho not much of note for the blog. When we re in Oregon, we met a women, Rebecca Ponzi, at a wine dinner at the Stoller vineyards. She and her husband moved to Italy something like 6 years ago and are doing stuff like producing olive oil, raising two sons and having a great time. Unfortunately they also have family ties to the Ponzi properties in Oregon and have to travel back frequently – including the fact that they are in charge of a restaurant in Dundee – meaning on a weekly basis they have Skype meeting with the staff to go over the restaurant and it’s operations and fly back frequently to take care of business.

Well, she made the mistake of inviting us to come and visit. And not one to let something like that pass by, we arranged to stay in an interesting B&B in the very small village of Torre di Palme – this is on the coast of the Adriatic Sea and a beautiful little hill top village – population (currently ) of about 65 people. Aside from just relaxing, which we did a lot of, she gave us the 50cent tour of the area and shared her “villa” with us prior to taking us to a lovely spot for lunch overlooking the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After getting everything together, we drove south along the water to Barletta – right about the “heel” of Italy. WE have decided to NOT got to Sicily but wind our way back up the western side of Italy and find a place to settle in for a while. More on that as it develops.

So far now, know that we are well and having a great time.

OK, the last several days have been RELAXING.  I admit, we haven’t done really any tourist things…we have relaxed, traveled some, eaten some and had some wines.  We left our Agratourisim place, which was really out in the country between Bologna and Moderna, and headed to a foreign country – yes a different country from Italy.

Along the drive we snapped a picture of the espaliered trees along the road.  It seems most of the fruit trees(apples and pears) are espaliered along rows with the irrigation at the top.  I guess to make picking the fruit easier or something, but we have seen these a lot.

 

Our drive took us to Rimini – a coastal town on the east coast of Italy where we stopped for lunch.  Not only did we stop for a really lovely lunch, but wandered into a couple of shops and bought strange things – a night light (which we have looked for in several places and never found), a knife to be able to cut snacks, fruit and other things when we have supper in our room (seems the little Swiss army knife isn’t good enough or strong enough) some fantastic grapes (funny the things you pick up along the way). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After lunch we headed west to another country – specifically to Republic of San Marino.  Yes, this is a small country all of 61 square Km (24 square miles) right smack dab in Italy.  Seems this place was a City State during all the history and never got incorporated into Italy.  It has the claim of being the 5^th smallest country in the world!  We had heard about this from Rebecca Ponzi (who we met at the Stoller dinner in Oregon prior to IPNC and is related to the Ponzi Wine folks of Oregon) and who it turns out has an olive oil company in Italy – where we are going to connect with her in a couple of days.

After we got checked into our hotel we walked around with the specific goal of getting to the tourist office so we could get a San Marino Visa stamp in our passports!  Doesn’t do much good but it is proof we made it to another country (this makes our 5^th so far on this trip).  After that we just sort of relaxed with a bottle of wine in our room with some cheese (using our new knife!) and crackers.  Today, Tuesday, we set a goal to do laundry and to get Janeen a hair appointment.  We accomplished both!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Several things – we have now been in Europe for almost a month (OK, it’s been actually 28 day so far) and several things are clear.  1) It’s nice to have my computer so we can listen to our own music (along with my Bluetooth speaker); 2) not have an actual agenda so we can do things like come to San Marino and do laundry and get hair done 3) be able to communicate with all of you via this blog 4) drink really good inexpensive wines and eat really great foods 5) discover new things every day 6) and drive a car we are actually keeping.  So, while we still have 3 more months to go (and I expect several more countries) it’s nice to be here and see this part of the world I would never have expected to visit.