In Arezzo
I’m not sure why Arezzo isn’t more of a tourist destination, but I’m not complaining. It’s a very nice city. Although its population is about 90,000, the old city is compact and walkable, if you don’t mind some steep climbs.
If you enter on the side of town where the rail station is, then you walk mostly uphill, first gradually then not so gradually, probably via Corso Italia until you reach the cathedral on the upper end of town. In the neighborhood of the cathedral, there is a beautiful park that looks over the “back” walls, a fortress (we haven’t visited yet), ancient churches, Petrarch’s house, some old municipal buildings, and, of course, your palazzi e piazze.
Our apartment, on piazza San Gemignano, is spacious and overlooks the mountains in the distance. It’s up a couple flights of steep stairs and is 4 rooms plus the bath. The bigger bedroom is inside a old tower. The kitchen isn’t as well stocked as some because, we speculate, the apartment has only recently been made available for weekly rentals. What often happens at these rental apartments is that the kitchen benefits from the parade of renters, each leaving behind some of what they purchased for la cucina e la tavola. At any rate, after two days of making frustratingly small amounts of bad coffee in a tiny, leaky stove-top espresso maker with a dried out gasket and a half melted-off handle, we bought a bigger espresso maker from a sweet old couple who have a stall in an open-air market that operates in a nearby piazza. It was a real bargain at sei euro and the man threw in 4 extra gaskets.
We were going to visit Cortona by rail and bus today, but didn’t muster up the energy so we’ll do so tomorrow.
