Saturday, 26 May 2012 - Under the Tuscan Sun

Yes - today was the day to visit Cortona.  I have read Frances Mayes' book, and Christine had seen the movie.  I believe that Hollywood made a few changes to the story, but both the book and the movies had inspired us to want to visit.  Our trip was again enjoyable - great countryside in the opposite direction to where we drove yesterday.  Found the car park OK after a few scary intersections where you had to drive out into them to see if anything was coming.  Luckily it wasn't.  Found a good car park which had a great view over the landscape.  We could see Montepulciano way in the distance.

Cortona didn't disappoint (nothing here seems to do that).  Another beautiful hilltop town, old stone buildings and a great Piazza where we sat and people watched for quite some time.

The Piazza - looks like a movie set

Eventually we decided to grab some lunch and we wandered off looking for something good.  Well, just around the corner from the Piazza was a market square with guess who.  Yes the same travelling market we had seen in Montepulciano and Montalcino was here today.  There were most of the old favourites, but a few new ones.  Anyway we found the vans selling the Porchetta Panini.  However stupidly (my fault always wanting to try something different) we didn't go to the guy we had used before, but a woman in the next place.  Her Porchetta was not as juicy (read dripping with pork fat) and wasn't quite as good.  Still I will know next time...  Tricia went and found another Pizza place and had what looked like a great vegetarian pizza.  We went and ate this on the steps to the Town Hall (I think that's what it was).

Mike had no trouble finding this one 

After lunch we went around some of the shops and found another car park with another spectacular view over Tuscany.
Mike sniffed out another Gelataria.  We left early afternoon.

Because we were early we decided to look at the Valdichianna Outlet Village.  I had found it on the web.  Sounded good, we were all looking forward to some cut-price Armani.  Well...  This was a major disappointment.  The web site stated '140 shops'.  We found about seven and only two of those were open.  We didn't stay long!

Tricia said

Drove to Cortona.  Beautiful Piazza where Under the Tuscan Sun film was shot.  Pizza for tea.