Anghiari

Tuesday morning was spent catching up with my missing blog posts for the past four days. All is well on the health front now so I can enjoy the last two full days here in Italy. First foray out was a trip to the recycling centre in Lippiano (which is the closest small town to Casa Tersalle; walking distance if you don't mind a descent and a bigger climb). We had a quick coffee in the only cafe there. The photo below is from the bar and Casa Tersalle is in the middle of the group of buildings across the valley.

After a delicious lunch of salad and left-over cold meat from the fridge, helped down with a bottle of Peroni, Jane headed off to work while Rob gave us the tour of Anghiari. This is the most striking of the nearby towns and is where the other three had dinner on Sunday night.

It really is an amazing medieval town perched on top of a hill. While there are fairly ordinary suburban housing areas surrounding it, the 'old' town is an incredible interconnected set of stone walls, houses and cobbled lanes in a maze of twists and turns. Scattered around are English language signs describing the various parts of the walls and buildings. It is famous for the 'Battle of Anghiari' between Florence and Milan in 1440. There is apparently a famous 'missing' fresco by Leonardo Da Vinci of the battle. This is only known because of a painting of the fresco by Peter Paul Rubens.

Anghiari - try to ignore the crane

A typical 'Street'

After our tour we headed home and Miriam prepared her masterpiece for the evening meal. She had promised to cook a curry one night so we had gathered the ingredients for: Palak Paneer (with her own homemade Paneer), Tarka Dhal and a Cauliflower dish. The first two dishes were with the help of Jamie Oliver! Add basmati rice and Rob's home-made 'Maharajah's Chutney', and it was a marriage made in heaven. Jane is a vegetarian and they both look forward to non-Italian food so it was a treat all round!