We’ve been in Tuscany four days now and still I haven’t said more than a few words about the place. We’re definitely out in the country. It’s an amazing feeling to slow down so much after having spent two weeks in full-speed tourist mode. This photo might give you a sense of how isolated we are here: here are the nearest active neighbors.

There’s an olive grove immediately below us, and then, about 3 miles away, in the distance you can see a small cluster of houses and the restaurant Il Cacciatore, still another mile or two away from the nearest town, Seggiano.

It’s an almost idyllic life. Most of our days are spent lounging around, reading books, conversing over a glass of wine, and cooking elaborate meals. Here’s our dining table, temporarily converted into a workspace for tonight’s hand-made pasta:

There’s a great pool, with warm water even this early in the season. Sometimes it can be difficult to convince our lazy kids to get in the water, but whenever they do, they have a great time:

In the background of this shot, you see one of the few flaws about our place: There are high-tension power lines crossing quite near the property. Depending on your attitude, you might say they spoil our view. But I feel like they’re not much of a problem, and probably mean we got a better deal on rent than we would have otherwise.

The town of Seggiano is absolutely adorable, built on top of a hill in classic Tuscan form. Here are my dad and his wife enjoying a stop on the way into town for groceries.

As you approach the town, you can see that it forms a nearly perfect silhouette against the sky.

I’m still getting used to the Italian language. The last time I went to Italy, I reviewed the language for a couple months before I left, but this time I was overconfident. The result is that I’m not doing very well when I need to order a meal or ask for directions. Eventually I usually get what I need, but earlier this morning I was trying to find a cheese shop in nearby Abbadia San Salvatore and either couldn’t get my point across, or couldn’t understand the directions I was given. So tonight we’ll have to settle for grocery store cheese — still probably better than most chees you can find in the U.S.

The house we’re renting in Tuscany sits high on a hillside above the road to Seggiano. It’s either a recently built or recently renovated structure of solid timber and stone. Even though the days are warm, the house is always cool. This is the first time on our trip I’ve actually needed covers on my bed to stay warm at night. Instead of waking up to the harsh sounds of motor scooters and garbage trucks, in the morning I’m surrounded by a chorus of cuckoos and other songbirds.

It’s hard to grasp the fact that just two days ago, we were on the bustling Amalfi coast. Perhaps that’s partly because I haven’t told you about Amalfi yet. Since it was just 20 miles or so away from Pompeii we decided we’d drive down and see if we could find a place to stay before our long-planned house-rental in Tuscany.

Just getting to Amalfi is quite an adventure. You drive along winding, poorly marked roads, with hurried, aggressive drivers on your tail the whole way. These roads are so narrow, yet so busy, that there are traffic guides with walkie-talkies spaced every kilometer along the whole route, stopping cars and especially buses at specified intervals to make sure that everyone can get through the tight spots.

Our first hint at what was in store came outside of Sorrento, still not technically part of the Amalfi coast:

The city comes right down to the top of these sheer vertical cliffs. The beaches for the tourists seem precariously perched on the edge of the sea, as if they might collapse into the water at any moment. We then took a winding road up over a 4000-foot mountain range and descended onto the proper Amalfi coast. Here is what we saw:

More cliffs, descending precipitously to the ocean, and our road hugging improbably close to them. Houses were again perched where it seemed no reasonable person would attempt to build:

Wherever the slope diminished from deadly to merely steep, a town was built. Here’s Positano:

Houses stair-step their way all the way up the mountain, as high as humanly possible. A few miles later we finally arrived at Amalfi, the biggest town on the coach by virtue of having a half-kilometer or so of actual flat ground. It was crowded, and there was no place to park, so we drove on, finally finding a parking spot in Minori, another town built literally into the side of the hill. Here we found a hotel with a place to park, so we stopped for the night. For 10 euros, you can rent a spot on the beach with an umbrella and two chaise lounges, so we paid up and headed to the sea. The thing to do once you get in the water is turn around and marvel at the fact that anyone would attempt to build a town here. Unfortunately I didn’t have my glasses or my camera, so there’s no record of our beach visit.

Here’s the view from our hotel window. Nothing spectacular, but it does give you a sense of how tightly the houses and apartments are packed in here:

The town actually extends off to the left for at least a kilometer or so up the hill. Wherever there weren’t houses or cliffs, there were lemon trees, planted on tiered platforms of stone, and for some reason partially shaded. The town makes its own brand of limoncello, so we bought a bottle to take with us to Tuscany. Greta and I had some last night, a pleasant way to end the evening.

[I’m going to post a series of posts from the first internet cafe I’ve found in Tuscany. These were written over the past several days]

We finally made it to Tuscany, where we’ll spend three weeks in a lovely villa near the town of Seggiano. Where’s Seggiano? Let’s consult the Papal map!

As you can see, it’s found in the ancient region of Etruria, the land which dominated Italy before the Romans came to power. But it’s still a bit difficult to make out on this large map. How about if we zoom in a bit?

You can now see it (spelled all Papal style as “Segoiano”) quite clearly in the lower-right corner of the photo. In the upper-left, about 50 kilometers away, is Siena (Florence is another 70 or so kilometers farther north). The famous wine-producing towns of Montepulciano and Montalcino are also nearby (though either Montalcino wasn’t in the Pope’s favor when this map was made, or it was not yet even a twinkle in Brunello’s eye back then). Montepulciano is on the right side of the map, near the top, and Montalcino would be in the middle of the map, near the bottom, a bit north of where you might just be able to make out “Angelo.”

(The map is in the Hall of Maps in the Vatican Museum in Rome, but Greta took a photo of it when we were there for just this occasion).

We’ve been out of internet range for a few days now (and in fact I have no idea when I’ll be able to post this), so let me get you caught up on what we’ve been up to.

After leaving Rome, we headed south for Pompeii. We were a bit concerned about this leg of the trip, since Pompeii is just outside of Naples, and Naples is currently experiencing a rather stinky problem: they’ve run out of landfill space, and the surrounding communities have stopped letting them pile their trash in their own shrinking landfill space. So the garbage has been piling up in the streets for several weeks now. The original plan had been to say in Naples and make a day trip out to Pompeii, but we had to modify that and stay in Pompeii proper.

The modern-day city of Pompeii is a bit run-down. It doesn’t have much in the way of hotels and restaurants other than those built to house visitors to its famous ancient ruins. I get the sense that it’s mainly a sort of bedroom community for Naples. But we did find a place, next to the noisy main road into town, that seemed comfortable enough (other than the noise). Apparently this time of year they don’t normally offer clients the luxury of air conditioning, but they took pity on us (it was a very warm day) and handed over the remote.

On to the ruins.

In a word, spectacular. They are vast, and many of the buildings and artworks within are extremely well-preserved. Unfortunately my camera’s batteries expired, so I didn’t get many pictures. Greta did a much better job:

Here me and Nora pretend to consult the map of the ruins for the benefit of the photographer.

It’s difficult to appreciate the vastness of this array of ruins, but this picture does a pretty good job:

In the background, you can see some of Vesuvius, which looks even more foreboding (postboding?) in this picture:

It was a sweltering day, and after three hours in the ruins, we were glad to get back to our air-conditioned hotel room. Jim was even happier when the restaurant serving us dinner gave him the largest bottle of Coke any of us had ever seen:

Now that’s refreshing!