more than once, in case there was any wisdom being passed about ...
Well. He'd drive and drive, and I'd navigate and navigate. Every so often there were loud arguments about the latter, mostly in the vicinity of Large Towns, into which we fairly soon decided not to venture. Too much bloody bother trying to get out again. (Like Sansepolcro, f'rinstance: took us about half an hour to work out the egress, which we'd started trying to do before we'd got as far as anything worth looking at because there wasn't.) So when we drove up to a place that we discovered was big, we just continued on past it. The ones we wanted to explore, we would drive into the centro and park, then wander about looking for something to eat -- as good a way as any other to get the layout of a place in your head !
Wednesday 6th March
Travelling: Arezzo - Subbiano - Bibbiena - Pratovecchio - Stia - Porciano - Poppi - Bibbiena - Chiusi - Caprese Michelangelo - Anghiari - Valico di Scheggia - Arezzo ..........
The main road past Bibbiena didn't give a good impression of the town; it was nicer, however, on
Well. He'd drive and drive, and I'd navigate and navigate. Every so often there were loud arguments about the latter, mostly in the vicinity of Large Towns, into which we fairly soon decided not to venture. Too much bloody bother trying to get out again. (Like Sansepolcro, f'rinstance: took us about half an hour to work out the egress, which we'd started trying to do before we'd got as far as anything worth looking at because there wasn't.) So when we drove up to a place that we discovered was big, we just continued on past it. The ones we wanted to explore, we would drive into the centro and park, then wander about looking for something to eat -- as good a way as any other to get the layout of a place in your head !
Wednesday 6th March
Travelling: Arezzo - Subbiano - Bibbiena - Pratovecchio - Stia - Porciano - Poppi - Bibbiena - Chiusi - Caprese Michelangelo - Anghiari - Valico di Scheggia - Arezzo ..........
The main road past Bibbiena didn't give a good impression of the town; it was nicer, however, on
the way back when taking a different road through it. Poppi we decided we'd come back to for further exploration, and we proceeded through Pratovecchio (when seen from the through road, one of the uglier Tuscan towns -- remarkable only for its obvious and enthusiastic embracing of the EU funds available for road-signage ... never have we seen such large, self-celebratory road-signs as we did in this not obviously attractive place !) to Stia. This *is* an attractive town, and the well-known sloping piazza is pleasing to the eye ... but Stia has the over-all air of being a place wherein one wonders what's happening in the rest of the world (a bit like Perth, really). The best thing about Stia is its proximity to Porciano, the little village clustering around another wonderful ruined rocca; we loved it !
I must confess that, whilst we did visit Poppi's castellino on the way back, we remember Poppi more for our first rosticceria, in which we made pigs of ourselves at lunchtime. Poppi is thus firmly fixed in our memories as A Nice Place.
Oh, one last point about Pratovecchio's signage; we kept seeing it for miles and miles ! My final
I must confess that, whilst we did visit Poppi's castellino on the way back, we remember Poppi more for our first rosticceria, in which we made pigs of ourselves at lunchtime. Poppi is thus firmly fixed in our memories as A Nice Place.
Oh, one last point about Pratovecchio's signage; we kept seeing it for miles and miles ! My final
