April 10 -- arrival at Castello della Panaretta

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Approaching Castello della Panaretta, our agritourismo for the night.

We have arrived.  They have an interesting and varied collection of succulents and other plants.

A collection of wind chimes, and other things which react to the movement of air.

Oh my.  This is what can happen when you live where rosemary is hardy!  I believe this was as tall as I am.

And just look at the flowers!

Love this matching quintet of flowering kale in a bird bath.

This building houses the agritourismo's dining room and teaching kitchen.  The building with our room was about 500 meters away (we were told).

We've checked in, and are enjoying the garden before heading just a bit farther down the road.

I was reading A.A. Milne's Sunny Days on the iPod.  My favorite story in the book is "Oranges and Lemons."  The oranges and lemons in the name of the story are taken by the characters in the story to be the quintessential sign that they were really in the south of France.  I was pleased to take this lemon as proof that I, too, was really in a place where lemons grow.

Grapevines across the road.

Our room is the the lower floor of the nearer corner of this building.  (There's a small parking lot just to the left of this shot, where Ugo is ensconced for the night.)

We had three keys.  One to open the gate onto the terrace at the back of the building (the dark doorway in the lower left corner -- partially obscured by a potted plant).

The gate onto the terrace.  (Note my 1 euro French shopping bag on the table.)

This door opened off the terrace into the building (and required another key).

This kitchen, for the use of guests, was just inside the door we saw in the shot above.  Collections of baskets and copper vessels and plates.....

Our room is on the other side of this wall.

If you squint at the pic above, you can see this tomato/hook at the left edge, just left of the sink.

This armoire is against the outside wall of the kitchen, and there's a couch between us and the armoire, against the wall behind the lamp.

On the inside of the wall which has the door into this space from the terrace is another collection of plates.  This one has three-dimensional sardines.

Our room, identified by its pink and green color scheme.  Frames, paintings, and a lamp made out of an old sewing machine.  Two cones of orange thread, and a bunch of books in various languages.

A very pink couch, with old shoe lasts.

So interesting, how differently human feet are shaped.  Some so square, and some so pointed.........

Looking out the front window over the street, to the top of the next hill.

A closeup, through the bars.

At some point, I really thought about bars on windows.  I realized that, in Italy, marauding armies are not something one reads about that happened elsewhere, but which, rather, were a very real presence, right here in Italy, less than 100 years ago.  That puts a whole different face on barred windows than we are used to in (most of) this (extremely lucky) USA.

Every hill in Tuscany is home to a fortified building, and the higher the hill, the bigger the building and the more elaborate the fortifications.  This little building's walls were working on being two feet thick, and even now, we needed three different keys to get into our room.

Barred windows seemed incongruous to this American, out where it was so amazingly quiet you could hear only the birds and the wind..........  But in the context of a history filled with war, up to so recently, it's easy to understand extremely thick walls, and barred windows, and needing three keys to get into a comfortable and quirky bedroom, way out in the country......



Chair, with re-done seat.  (And there's my French shopping bag again, in the upper left corner.)

The seat of this chair was redone with neckties!  This makes me smile every time I see it............... 

In order to facilitate chronological traversal of these posts, here is a link to the next post.

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