Rambling

Today I went for a long walk. Originally the plan was to finish up the final sketches for my drawing midterm, but somehow that didn't work out. So instead I just wandered. One reason I love Cortona so much is because you never seem to run out of interesting twists, turns, side roads, or surprises. No matter how many times you walk around town, there's always more details to notice, more cool places to explore. For example: I walked up and down the steep hill leading up to school more than a dozen times before I managed to notice a giant...not small, not large, but giant...mural on the side of a church. It's not that I'm blind or completely unobservant (although that's not entirely out of the question), but there's just so much else to look at...not to mention a terrific view. I was perched on the city wall today and saw a random house with the most detailed fresco in the eaves of the roof. You'd never see that in the states. Ever.

Doors are something else that I have fallen in love with here. You have all kinds: shorts doors that not even I could go through without stooping, huge doors that Drew x 2 could walk through, doors that are so old that the bottoms are warped and the paint is all bubbled and cracked in the most interesting ways, and doors that have fabulous metalwork all over them. You have doors that lead down, doors at the top of staircases, turns set into buildings, and doors that don't seem to lead anywhere. And that's not even getting to the knockers. You have knockers designed to look like pharaohs' heads (especially popular here - not sure why), demons, faces, and hands. And the handles! I could go on all day describing them, but I'll spare you.

Then there's the architecture itself - I feel like a little kid at a playground. There are arches, buttresses, giant cathedrals, covered walkways between buildings, tiny churches, bell towers, domes, alcoves, crumbling steps, hidden walled gardens, the tiniest and narrowest streets you can imagine and big broad streets that lead to the city walls. Everywhere you turn you find something unique. The company is not bad either - young Italians couples strolling with their children, old grandma's scolding children in loud Italian, friendly shopkeepers, loud students, Canadian backpackers from the hostel, tourists in for the day, an inquisitive chicken wandering the street, and a snobby tomcat basking in the middle of the piazza.