In grad-school structures we learned to calculate the exact center of gravity of a strangely-shaped piece of steel. I guess we used it to figure out where the forces would accumulate, I can't really remember, but it's how I picture lake Trasimeno (tra-see-meh-no) in Italy. Like if you took all of Italy and tried to figure out where it's center of gravity was? Lake Trasimeno.
Passignano is on the east side of the lake, about halfway up. It's an hour or so north of Perugia. At one time that was really important because with all the warring factions in Italy, Perugia had the biggest army and most of the little towns around here swore their allegiance in exchange for protection.
The first pictu
re is Passignano from the water. See the building to the right behind the clocktower? That's our building (although unfortunately not our windows). We're about halfway up the street between the clocktower and the tower of the castle above. Now to get from the level of the water 
up to our house? You have three options. You can take the street or stairs on the north side of the old City which wind up the hill more slowly, but there's no shade over there, so it's an unlikely choice (unless you've just arrived in town with your rolling luggage). You can take the winding switchback stairs (picture 2, showing switchback 3 of 4), which are lovely, but only shaded morning and late afternoon. Or if it's the middle of the day, you take the really long staircase (picture 3) and then walk up the street (picture 4). That's if you really must be out in the middle of the day, which we're learning, you don't want to be. In the last picture, you're on our doorstep looking back down at the water. 
Charles Dickens spent a year traveling through Italy and wrote a book about everything he saw. The descriptions are great, often invoking either fears of savage pre-roman societies, or appreciation of rustic living. I think his descriptions are wonderful, but I'm awfully glad I can describe everything with a few photos instead.
Okay, this is clearly not going to turn into a food blog, because after three days I'm already tired of writing about food. But, I'll talk about dinner, and that will be enough. Basta.
Each morning I start at the produce store. This is mostly because they're really nice and have proven the most patient with my limited Italian. First I insult them by asking, "what's good?" or at least, that's what I did until John explained that I was indicating they would sell something less than good. I should have figured it out because they always looked surprised and said, "tutto!" Anyway, now instead I ask what they recommend, or I just pick out whatever vegetable looks interesting. So far we've really liked fresh porcini mushrooms, these round little eggplants which are a lilac color, and of course, the tomatoes, which come in about six shapes and colors.
After produce, I check on the pasta store, because I can't quite figure out what their hours are. If it's open, we'll get fresh tagliatelle or pappardelle. You have to wait a bit for the women making the pasta in the back to finish their conversation before they realize you're there. If I were Italian, I would just start talking loudly, and they would talk back loudly, and we'd talk loudly as they came and helped me. But I'm a shy American, so I always wait a bit before timidly calling out, "buon giorno?" They're always very nice when they realize I'm there.
Then, it's back the other direction to the macelleria (butcher). Usually I walk in, get totally intimidated by all the cuts of meat I've never seen before, and walk back out. In fact, other than buying some prosciutto, some pre-cut pancetta and some parmigiano, I haven't quite gotten up the guts to buy any of the meat yet. They have some pre-rolled rotolini which I'd like to try. In any case, it's been so hot, John and I haven't really missed the meat. Still, one of these days we'll need to get some protein from a non-processed source.
Until then, great vegetables, good pasta, we're eating really well.
Today I'll talk about lunch, or pranzo (just one more blog about dinner tomorrow and then I'll stop talking about food. for the most part). The first day I made our lunch here in Passignano, we had sandwiches on yummy white-bread rolls which were all that the panetteria had. After lunch, John quickly fell asleep. So we decided to try and make lighter lunches. The next day I made salads with lettuce, cherry tomatoes, some kind of sweet green peppers (which look like anaheim), a bit of ham, and some shredded parmigiano. Delicious! The tomatoes here are so good, that you can pretty much eat anything with them and it's delicious. So we switched to salads for a few days. But you know what? John still fell asleep after lunch. And because we were eating so light, we were always peckish by 3:00, which meant, inevitably, that we needed to go for gelato.
Then finally I discovered a panetteria on the other side of the shopping area that sells black bread (my favorite route into town in the mornings is now the staircase that passes right by the ovens of this bakery! yum!). So then we started making sandwiches with prosciutto, mozarella, cucumbers soaked in vinegar, lettuce, tomatoes and peppers. John calls them Dagwood sandwiches, and if I may say so myself, they are delicious.
The black bread loaves are like small footballs with pointed ends, so I can get a few slices for sandwiches out of the middle, but inevitably you end up with two un-sandwichable heels. Yesterday we struggled our way through chopping up these hard ends, some of them many days old, diced a cucumber and two tomatoes, added some basil, and had a panzanella salad. All these years I've been throwing out french bread when it got hard. Why didn't I know that you c
ould add some oil and vinegar and it would transform into something amazing? Delicious.
We also started buying wedges of watermelon so that we could snack on that rather than gelato. But you know what? The gelato is really good. Unfortunately Ann Rinaldi, the wonderful woman who rented us this place, told us which place in town had the best gelato, and it's fantastic. So despite beefier sandwiches and watermelon slices, we still can't always resist. John typically mixes mint and dulce de leche, or straciatella and limone. I've fallen in love with Zuppa Inglese (like a custard) and Amarena (sour black cherry). Delicious. Okay, enough delicious. Today I'm putting slowly sauteed peppers from last night's dinner on focaccia with a little mozarella. Hopefully it will be up to snuff.
I swore I wouldn't turn this into a food blog, oohing and aahing about every glass of wine and amazing tomato. And I promise I won't, but it does seem like I should talk just a bit about what we're eating.
Today I'll talk about breakfast, or colazione. In the States, John and I like to start healthy with fresh fruit in greek yogurt with a high-fiber cereal mixed in. Here in Passignano we get great fruit and yogurt (banana flavored, a favorite of ours), but high-fiber cereal has proven scarce. They have oats, and muesli-like cereals, but there's often odd things like bits of chocolate in it. Really? Does that still count as healthy? So, trying to be healthy, we skip the cereal and eat just fruit in yogurt in the morning.
But a few hours later? We're hungry again. So we walk down the hill to the main cafe and have a spremuta (fresh squeezed juice), a cornetto (croissant), and a cappucino (frothy yumminess). Now the biggest decision of our morning is what kind of cornetto we're going to get. They have cream filled, jelly filled, honey filled, rice cream filled, and chocolate filled (what's with chocolate and breakfast?). There's probably more options, but this is all we've discovered so far. I try to eat mine neatly, holding it in the napkin like an Italian, but John likes to slowly tear his apart, getting filling all over his fingers and showering his shirt with the powdered sugar sprinkled on top. He then informs anyone paying any attention, "che casino!" which means, what a mess! (I'll include a picture tomorrow) Surprisingly, they still seem happy to see us in the cafe each morning.
Someday we will find a supermarket with a better selection of cereal (perhaps in Perugia), but for now, we feel that the climb back up from the cafe probably works off the extra calories of our second breakfast.
When we first arranged to live in Passignano, I had hoped there would be a path along the lake for walking or jogging. Unfortunately, like most old lakeside towns, the edge of the lake is defined by a road with a constant stream of cars. There is a swathe of parkland between the road and the lake immediately across from town, but it doesn't provide much more than a strolling area where you can eat your gelato. To actually work off that gelato, I needed to find somewhere else to walk.
So the other day I went out the medieval City walls and followed a street up to the hill above. A
couple blocks later, miracolo! I come across a sign for a pedestrian path linking Passignano and some other town! I head off into a grove of olive trees, the lake visible off to my right. Later, after a long stretch lined with cypress, I come to an old farmhouse and an abandoned church which is being used as a greenhouse. The trail heads downhill at this point, past the church, into an area of lusher greenery, and then gets a bit difficult to see. Suddenly I worry that perhaps I have taken a wrong turn. A dog starts barking. I can't see the dog, but he sounds annoyed, and I don't want to run into him, so I turn around and head back. But as I reach the abandoned church, I pass two German hikers. Clearly I was going the right way.
The next day, determined to do a proper walk on the trail, I head out again, telling John I will be back in an hour to join him for his morning cappucino and cornetto. When I get to the church
and farmhouse, I now see the dog whose barking frightened me the day before. He lives up in a loggia attached to the back of the house, and leans out the openings to threaten those on his territory. Today I tell him, "bravo, bravo," and keep going. He's not going to jump down from that height.
The trail is amazing. It goes through areas of wild growth, then emerges in farmlands before tucking into a bit of forest. There are old stone houses, roosters, butterflies, and lots more dogs. Occasionally there are trail markers, typically a red and white rectangle painted on a tree or rock. They're subtle. Finally I arrive in a tiny little town where the road splits. I don't see a trail marker, but it's close to the 1/2 hour mark, so I'm ready to turn around. A woman emerges from one of the houses, sees me standing there and tells me if I want to see the old something (I can't quite understand what it is), I just follow the road up to the left. Now, here's where it's a problem to not speak Italian. I pretty much understand what she is saying, and if I knew Italian I could tell her, "no, not today, I need to turn around, but I'll come back next time." Instead, I nod, say, "grazie!" and head off the direction I've been pointed along. I figure I'll go 5 minutes farther and then turn around and hope she's not there.
But the trail opens up to a great panorama, and then there's an amazing stone house being renovated, and when I finally decide I really do need to turn back, it's been 15 more minutes. And so I turn around and head home. And then I'm passing bee apiaries, which are so neat. But, w
ait a minute, how did I not notice them last time? Maybe I took the wrong road. I try another one, apartments buildings, hmm, that's not right. I spend the next half hour trying to figure out where I came from. I find an old church (ah! that's what the woman was telling me about), there are red and white markers all over, but none of them seem to get me back to that little town where I came from.
Finally I ask a woman walking her dog how to get to Passignano. She says it's easy, just follow that road to the right. Now, if I spoke Italian better, I could ask her if there was a pedestrian trail rather than the main road she's pointing me towards, but I don't speak better Italian, so again I say, "grazie!" and head off down the street. It does take me back to Passignano, just the non-scenic way, back down to the road along the edge of the lake with the constant stream of cars.
Yesterday I followed the trail again. This time I paid better attention. Oh, and following the guy on the tractor also helped.
Wednesday morning I need to return the rental car to Arezzo, so I decide to make a day of it. I get on the autostrada (have I learnt nothing?), but at some point I realize I must have missed my exit, and pull off in the small town of Foiano della Chiana. Yes, I missed my exit, but I can take this smaller road up to Arezzo, which proves, of course, to be a much nicer drive. Soon I see a cow up ahead on my left. But it's not moving. And next to it is a small horse. And a large mushroom? It's a fabricator of all those animals and crazy things you can buy for your garden. If they'd had a plaster highland cow, it would now be in a shipping container headed home.
I get to Arezzo, return the car, and stroll up to the main piazza to have some water and a pastry. It's hot. Only the tourists are moving around. I spend the next couple hours drawing and watching some little kids, who are immune to the heat, run around the piazza, reveling in the large open space. Once I'm done with my drawing, I realize that yet again I am smack in the middle of siesta. Maybe, since Arezzo is a slightly larger and more tourist-y town, some things will still be open. 
I head over to try and see the Piero della Francesa frescos. There's a sign saying you need a reservation, uh oh. But when I walk into the ticket office, there's an American desperately trying to unload some tickets for the time slot starting right then! I buy one of her tickets and stroll right in. I'm feeling so very efficient with my time as I peruse the frescoed stations of the cross, which are great, by the way. Piero has the ability to make everything, even a battle scene, feel calm and well composed. But then he always paints one person looking right at the spectator, and so as your eyes move tranquilly around the scene, there's a sudden shock as your eyes meet.
The next train home isn't until 3:15, so I sit and have a Panzanella salad and read my book (who knew day-old bread could be so good?), which again, feels like a great use of my time. Unfortunately, when I get to the station, I discover that the 3:15 doesn't run during the summer. I have to wait for the 4:15. I kill an hour in the train station. Luckily my train is on time. Then I get to Terontola where I have to switch trains. My connection? Not for another hour. I go have an ice cream, I read about Lindsay Lohan's sentencing in the Italian newspaper, I'm beginning to understand why Italians all seem so good at killing time. Finally I get home, sunburnt from all my sitting around, but happy to see my husband and now sit around with him.
I've realized that in the past ten years my brain has been a bit over saturated with images of Tuscany. Every coffee table books seems to have a picture of rolling hills, with a patchwork of green and yellow fields, cypress trees on a ridge in the distance, and an old farm house with some fantastic plaster color that screams, "yes, I could be in a fresco!" It's really beautiful, and to be honest, I didn't expect EVERY view to be like this, but it is, and I'm a bit over it. Okay, central Italy, you're beautiful, I get it.
But on the way home from Urbino, we found a landscape that bowled us over. We decided to take the autrostrada (I know better, but I just couldn't handle the hairpin road again and neither could John's stomach). Fortunately at Furlo, we took a wrong turn which pulled us off the autrostrada and onto a small road through the town. As we realized later, we pulled off just in time because the autostrada tunnels through this whole area, and we would have missed it.
The landscape, which had been green and mountainous, suddenly started to expose large escarpments of stone. The exposed rock became more prevalent and steeper, and suddenly we were driving through a gorge. On the left, at the bottom of the gorge, a gorgeous river appeared, held back by a lovely dam. On the right, the road wound through an old rock tunnel, past an altar to Mary placed in a hollow in the stone, and continued along the gorge. It was breathtaking.
In grad-school structures we learned to calculate the exact center of gravity of a strangely-shaped piece of steel. I guess we used it to figure out where the forces would accumulate, I can't really remember, but it's how I picture lake Trasimeno (tra-see-meh-no) in Italy. Like if you took all of Italy and tried to figure out where it's center of gravity was? Lake Trasimeno.
re is Passignano from the water. See the building to the right behind the clocktower? That's our building (although unfortunately not our windows). We're about halfway up the street between the clocktower and the tower of the castle above. Now to get from the level of the water 
up to our house? You have three options. You can take the street or stairs on the north side of the old City which wind up the hill more slowly, but there's no shade over there, so it's an unlikely choice (unless you've just arrived in town with your rolling luggage). You can take the winding switchback stairs (picture 2, showing switchback 3 of 4), which are lovely, but only shaded morning and late afternoon. Or if it's the middle of the day, you take the really long staircase (picture 3) and then walk up the street (picture 4). That's if you really must be out in the middle of the day, which we're learning, you don't want to be. In the last picture, you're on our doorstep looking back down at the water. 
