Pienza

Some days ago we thought we would venture off in a different direction. After consulting our guide book, and looking at the map, we decided to head towards the town of Pienza, a Unesco World Heritage Site. The drive there was absolutely stunning (the pictures from our Tuscan Lanscape post were mostly taken on this day), and numerous stops were made on our way to the town. By the time we reached Pienza, the kids were all hot and bothered and were already clamouring for a gelato. Their ice cream craze subsided though when we entered the medieval feeling streets of the old town -- it felt like we had stepped back in time.

Pienza is a walled city atop a hill, as are the majority of the towns in this area. The lovely thing about Pienza, which we haven't really seen in the other walled towns and cities we've been to, was that there was a walkway right beside the wall which overlooked the stunning Tuscan landscape. One could just imagine the townspeople of the past strolling along and surveying the surrounds. Then just in case someone did scale the wall, windows on the walkway were all covered with these intense iron grates that you see in the photo below.
As we walked along this wall, we were met with some very lovely sounds -- music coming from the church ahead. We rounded the corner to discover the most stunning square with the church front and centre. The doors were open, so we just wandered right on in. At the front of this spectacularly lovely church was a large symphony! The music they were creating was absolutely sublime so we just sat down in the pews and listened, the picture below is of Pippin while she is enjoying the music.
As we listened and looked a little closer, we realized that the players only looked to be between the ages of 14 to 17! We were blown away that such young musicians could be so accomplished. Then of course we started to speculate -- we realized that the conductor who kept stopping them and giving them notes for particular parts of the music was speaking English. We figured that this must be some sort of elite group from some private English school off on some Tuscan summer music camp. The music continued for quite awhile, and we just kept enjoying it while we looked around the lovely church (the picture below shows the ceiling) -- it was one of those moments that one feels pretty special to have stumbled upon.
After the musicians finished their rehearsal, we continued our wanderings. The town was full of these old torch holders on all of the buildings. We could just imagine what it must have looked like with all the torches alight on a summer's night.
As usual, we had timed our trip a little on the late side, and we hit the town for the midday siesta. One would think we would have this down by now after 3 months in countries that all have a midday siesta, but somehow we always manage to time it just right to miss all of the shops. It is just as well as this curbs our (well at least Skye's) potential consumer tendencies! One of the shops we passed was this Pecorino cheese shop. The fan in the shop was vented out onto the old cobbled street, and so the smell of ripening cheese filled the air -- not the most lovely of scents, but the cheese sure looks good! Pecorino originated from this area, but is now made all over Italy.
Since it was lunch, we also checked out the local eateries and tucked into some bruschette and paninis before having our daily gelato. We have been making sure we have simple daily salad with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic to supplement this mainly white diet!
We finished our wanderings of Pienza with gelatos in hand. We will leave you with this picture of the walkway along the wall.

Until next time . . .

Skye, Ronato, Kai & Pippin