hermits, hot springs

This entry will be a list because, overwhelmed by the volume of doing-stuff that has uncharacteristically characterised my recent existence, I can't get an anecdote together.

Recent visitors with highlight moments:

Lily: Climbing the tower at Siena to see the cypress-stitched fields below and the big bell above, mad nightrider dos resulting from long-uncut hair and high-altitude bluster. Drinks on a balcony bench seat overlooking the main piazza. More drinks, this time in Venice, being glasses of wine drunk while sitting cross-legged on a jetty by the Rialto at night, watching the young couples in matching parkas go by in their outboard dingies.

Lily, queen of the world

Dorsoduro

The boat market

Nik: I'm sure we went places but I don't remember where; we just talked ourselves inside out. All to the good. You can see from the photo that we got as far as the park at the top of the hill.

Jenny and Paul (Reggio) and Sarah S (Australia): Camaldoli monastery and hermitage, sooooo pretty, which made me want to be a hermit. A latin-reading, pottery-making lady hermit. And the procession of the dead Jesus at Terra Nuova. Explanation to follow, probably. Think of it as a mobile passion play.

Lovely Camaldoli

Montepulciano

Don't freak out, it's just tomato sauce.

Sarah S and Fausto, an Aretine friend: Bagno Vignoni, a medieval hotspring resort that used to be such a den of iniquity (men and women bathing naked with nothing but strung-up sheets separating them, gasp) that St Catherine's parents brought her there to tempt her out of her saintly ways. It didn't work. You're not allowed to swim in the main pool anymore, but down the road a bit you can bathe your feet in the gutter that carries the run-off to the river below. Hot waterfall footspa, rock.

Sair the cutey