Cortona: More of a Story Than I Expected

Cortona…I’m very tempted to start with the last first, but I’ll keep you in suspense. Let’s just say that I had always pictured that a day in Cortona would be a very relaxing one, with beautiful views and small town charms. Instead, it became one of the most eventful days of my life.

The day started off wonderfully. When we arrived at the Camucia train station we found that there was a bus coming in just five minutes. Chris got on the bus and asked the bus driver if he was going to the center and all of a sudden we were being driven off before he stopped directed us to this store, where we figured we were supposed to buy the tickets. We ran in there while the bus driver nicely waited, were told they had no tickets, worriedly cam back to the bus driver who just smiled and waved us on and drove off.

We drove up this really long winding road with views of the hillside above. Along the way the hills were covered with daisies, dandelions, and beautiful poppies and dotted by tall cypresses and pines. The driver would sometimes wave or yell out the window to people he knew. At the top he let us off at Piazza Garibaldi, scolded the Italian kids who started getting on the bus before we got off, and smiled and waved goodbye to us. This was quite different than treatment we have received from the bus drivers in Perugia and a very nice start to the day.

The piazza we were left off in was one of the two main ones in Cortona. It has really gorgeous views of Tuscany. You can see Lake Trasimeno and all these differently colored patches of fields, including bright yellow ones filled with flowers. We ate lunch there and then walked along a street with very touristy but nice stores and stopped at a gelateria that had been recommended online. Sure enough, the gelato was absolutely delicious, not to mention a huge portion, and we settled into the adjacent piazza, Piazza Reppublica, and sat on the steps of the big clock tower. It’s one of the most charming piazzas I’ve ever seen, surrounded by little cafes and a flower shop, and with views down the alleyways of the countryside below. There’s a café on one of the rooftops and someone had a part of their house that stuck out into one of the alleys with a big window. It’s really lovely.

We then walked to another piazza with two palazzi, where they were cleaning up and packing away from the market earlier that morning. We visited the Duomo, which we couldn’t even tell was the Duomo, as it was so small, and saw more beautiful views from there (they’re pretty much all over the town). From there we began to climb, first stopping at San Francesco, which had these beautiful big wooden benches and famous art by Signorelli, then up an extremely steep hill to San Cristofero, with more lovely views, charming frescos with flat perspectives, chickens in the yard next door, and beautiful little gardens in the back of all the little houses we passed. From there we hiked even farther, up this tree lined path to Santa Margherita. From there you could see a fortress built by the Medicis. Unfortunately, the church was closed, which is too bad, as Saint Margherita’s incorruptible body is there.

From that church you can walk down another steep hill and along the way there are mosaics of the Stations of the Cross. Over vine covered stone walls there is once again the view of Lake Trasimeno and, as you are higher up, you can even see other parts of Cortona. There were many cats along the way and also several convents, not that those are related.

Along the way, feeling a bit sheepish, I kept consulting a chapter in Under the Tuscan Sun where she describes walking along the town, and it served to be a very useful guidebook. Without even really meaning to we had followed a path that she described so I kept looking to see what she wrote about the different areas. We also wanted to try to see her house, Bramasole, so we had found rough directions to it online the previous night. Using this and her book, we decided to try to reach it.

We first walked through the public gardens, a beautiful area with lots of trees, benches, a dolphin fountain, and a stone theater. We then came along a street covered in little stones and lined with cypresses, just as she describes in the book. We walked for quite a while until we realized we were really out in the middle of nowhere and the author is supposed to live close to the town. We doubled back and tried a few more ways before realizing that it was time to start heading back. Eventually we found ourselves on what, looking back, could only be considered a farm path through someone’s olive trees. There we were trespassing along, the Tuscan countryside below us, farmhouses and olives surrounding us.

We took this path to another road which led to another that led us back to the public gardens. Previously we had noticed old cars racing through town and on the way up we had seen signs about Ford sponsoring a race. When we were in the gardens we noticed that the cars were right below us so we went and stood for a while watching the cars whiz by and taking pictures, thinking how fun it was that there happened to be a race with these crazy old cars the day we were in Cortona.

We headed back to Piazza Garibaldi and asked a policewoman where we could get bus tickets, purchased them, and then stood by the stop waiting for the bus. I began to get worried as it became later and finally we started examining the schedule more closely. Eventually we noticed a sign that had been flipped over that said that no buses were running that day until past 7:30 because of the race. This meant we were stuck in Cortona.

Alright, I said, let’s just walk. Chris pointed out that the train station was many miles away, down this huge hill, and in the midst of a town that we had no idea how to find our way through. We’ll just follow this main road that the bus came up and then ask directions once we reach the town, I said. I figured we were fast walkers and since we had seen all the cars lined up along the streets and the drivers walking along in their jump suits it seemed like the race was over so the buses might be going to other bus stops along the route and just couldn’t reach this piazza due to the cars on the side of the road.

So we began to head down the hill, figuring that this was our best option. After a decent bit of walking we began to hear an ominous sound. A sound we had been hearing all day but that hadn’t meant all that much to us. The sound of a race car whizzing toward you. We walked past a man wearing a yellow vest and talking into his walkie talkie. Surely, we thought, if we were in immediate danger he’d let us know. We kept walking, making sure to stay on the very edge of the road, knowing we couldn’t really go back at this point, praying that the cars might be going a different way. Then we noticed people ahead, a large crowd of spectators on someone’s terrace, and another man in a bright vest. “Get off the road!” one of the spectators yelled in Italian. We did not hasten to listen and ran onto the patch of grass nearby. A minute later cars began racing up the hill, speeding by. We were stuck on this small patch of grass and had no idea what was going on. Why had no one told us we couldn’t go this way? Where were we supposed to go when we couldn’t even go back?

Thinking there was a lull in the racing, as earlier in the day we had noticed only a few cars seemed to go at a time, we cautiously began to try to hurry over a bridge. Halfway along another car came speeding along and we leapt up onto the wall of the bridge, terrified. We ran back toward the patch of grass we had been on and waited for a really long time, still having no idea how we were ever going to get out of there. After a bit we noticed another man who had been filming start to walk along the road so we followed him, as he seemed to know about what was actually going on.

We were able to walk along for a good while, noticing that the only people that were also walking up and down the road were those wearing press passes. Why weren’t the many policemen or men in vests trying to stop us or at last figure out why we were on this road that we now clearly realized was a race track? It was really embarrassing passing all the crowds of spectators as we kept trying to scurry down the hill to get out of this crazy situation. We kept trying to scramble around trees and into little gulleys, running whenever there was a side of the road that we didn’t feel was big enough to keep the cars far away. We wavered between feeling really stupid for having gotten into this situation, really scared, and having nervous fits of laughter at the ridiculousness of what was happening.

We then heard once again that now awful sound of the cars and so ran to the next bigger patch of grass and sat on a wall. This time it appeared that every single car in the race, probably about a hundred, was now heading back down the hill. We waited, frustrated, not knowing when this was going to end, if they were going to just start racing again when they got to the bottom, or how we were ever going to get to our train. Finally, we saw a car labeled safety car so after that passed we once again began our cautious but desperate scurrying along the roadside. Finally, after maybe another mile of this we reached the end of the race. No one had said anything to us the entire time, except that one spectator. Not one police officer had even approached us. It was the most bizarre and scary situation I have been in. Who ends up walking along a race track during a professional race (oh yes, we learned that later) in a small town in Tuscany? It was crazy.

Now that we had reached the town we needed to find the train station and we needed to find it quickly. We headed as far as we recognized from the bus ride up and then I began to run up to various people and ask which way to the train station. We would follow their directions until we couldn’t anymore and then ask the next people. At one point there was construction on a road that we were directed to, so we took a path around it that we figured was there for that purpose. Toward the end we realized that this had just led us into someone’s driveway so we started to turn around. That’s when we heard barking. Thankfully, it was a somewhat smaller dog so we tried to back away quickly as it was growling and barking, figuring it at least couldn’t do a lot of harm. As we turned and walked away I heard Chris yell, looked back, and saw him leaping away from the dog as it tried to bite him. It kept trying to bite him and he was holding it off, in a way that seems funnily dramatic now, telling me to get away. Luckily, a woman in a window heard all the commotion and called the dog off, Chris yelled sorry, and we walked away really fast. It now began to rain. (I am not making this up).

So now it’s raining pretty hard and it’s getting closer and closer to the time of our train departure. I ask another group of men for directions and we run off to the main street of this town. We ended up having to climb down into a construction area because the road we were on had no sidewalks and many speeding cars. We asked another group of people at a garden store where to go and they pointed us back in the other direction, explaining that there were two rotaries, etc. We headed back and I asked another pair of people, just to confirm that this was actually the right way. We now had fifteen minutes. We began to run, feeling like we were in some strange episode of Amazing Race, until we finally reached the train station, exhausted and unable to believe that all of this had happened.

The train ended up being late which meant we missed the connecting train so we had to wait for an hour in this tiny little train station while it was raining outside. We sat and read and ate the little food we had left, as we should have been home in time for dinner. Just as we were getting up to go to our platform for the train three policemen entered the room and approached everyone in the room. Chris and I figured they were checking for tickets so we handed those to the man. No, he said, passport. This was not good.

Chris pulled out the copy he carries in his wallet and asked if that would be enough. The man said that it was and then turned to me. I tried to explain something about studying in Perugia and how I didn’t even have my wallet today. He returned to writing Chris’s information on a sheet of paper while I worried about what was going to happen to me.

Another, gruffer looking policeman, then approached us and asked what the problem was. The other policeman said that I didn’t have my passport. The gruffer one turned to Chris and began asking why he didn’t have his passport. Chris started to also try to explain that we were studying in Perugia, trying to get the point across that we were on a day trip, but the man interrupted him and again asked where the passport was. The other policeman explained that it was me who didn’t have it and so he now turned and stared at me for a while. After a while of this intense glaring I simply repeated “I don’t have it,” not knowing what he wanted me to do. He just said “I know” and continued to glare at me. The third policeman then walked over and they began to consult one another.

I was extremely nervous, not knowing if this was something you could be arrested in Italy for, feeling really stupid for not carrying at least a copy with me, even if it was just a day trip. I couldn’t believe that this was happening to top off the other events we had experienced. Meanwhile, I heard one of them say “she is probably American” which is when the gruff one turned to me and asked where I was from. “Stati Uniti,” I replied. They looked at me for a little bit longer and then simply turned and walked away. Needless to say, I couldn’t wait to get on the train and get out of there.

And so after a very action packed day, the first part very pleasant, the latter very terrifying, we boarded the train and finally got home about an hour later, unable to believe that all of those things had really happened to us.

Oh, and yes, yet again, I'll have to promise pictures for another time.