Italian day of Immaculate Conception - damn that lady worked quick! This meant a day off for the whole of Italy. Breathed a sigh of relief as I certainly couldn't imagine doing a whole week at work already!
Took a chilled day, taking strong advantage of all that was quiet in Planet Italia. Spent a lot of the morning staring out of the living room window over the hills at the crazy amounts of birds that were swirling around. Actually, those damned birds woke me up. At 10am. What are birds doing making that sort of noise at that time. Maybe they are true Italian birds. Anywhere there were 3 different flocks all doing mad things out of the fields. One set of starling type birds which swirled together and moved around like a crazy whirling dervish - all in one combined multi-organism, many heads acting as one, but really not much going on - just random erratic motion, don't think Brownian motion, more drunken student, staggering from tree to tree. And waking me up - talking and gesticulating like only an Italian bird can! Then there was a flock of seagulls playing down on the fields almost out of view, and thankfully out of earshot as I hate the squawks they make. That was the worst thing about living in Bath - all the damn vampires, I mean seagulls. Kept me awake at night - one time I even ran outside from my flat, in the centre of town near Bath rugby club {lived next door to a couple of pro rugby players} and screamed at the birds to stop, and like King Canute absolutely sod all happened but I felt better, despite being outside in the cold and screaming in my dressing gown. It was blue my dressing gown. Not my favourite. But why were there seagulls in Bath? Nowhere near the sea? I mean, you can almost accept them if you live by the sea as part of the yin and yang of life's rich tapestry - but, seagulls, in Bath? Pah! I digress - there were some other birds too. Doing bird stuff. I hope they are not damaging the vines. Some of the vines have grown too large and have been replanted, or replaced. We need a good crop!
In the afternoon we decided to explore and took a spin out to a place called Volterra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volterra
as it was somewhere that neither of us had been before and it looked good in the guide. It was a brief drive of about 50 km away, some great fun twisty roads on the way up past some stunning hill top walled towns and as we were approaching the outskirts we say this crazy piece of art like a big "O" - so Dawn jumped out of the car {it was too wet and windy for me} and took some wonderful pictures of the countryside through the "O".
The town was great. Classic old walled town, quaint cobbled bits throughout, old town square and the best bit of all was this well preserved ampitheatre. Stunning. Great day all round. Will try and spend a full day there soon. Lots of adverts for operas and theatre and plays and natale {xmas} stuff so will try and get there again soon.
Went to bed early as Dawn had to go to a meeting in Roma, so had to be up at 04:30.
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