Monteriggioni

The lovely tiny city of Monteriggioni sits atop its hill like the sentinel it was designed to be.

(This is a photo of a bookmark I bought in the town. We just weren't able to get this good a picture from the car windows as we approached or left the area. So, to give credit where credit is due, the original photographer was Paolo Busato. It's really neat how much you can see if you enlarge it twice. Gives it a grainy look, but that kind of goes well with it, kind of like a watercolor.)

Tomorrow I'll try to put some of my own photos of the town up, but you just have to see it this way, from afar, to understand why it holds such a sense of wonder. Monteriggioni is near Strove, the hometown of our dear friend Paolo Chesi, where he and his wife Tosca now have a weekend home. (Yes, they are the ones for whom our little dogs are named.)

When Tosca and I were walking the roads around Strove, we weren't quite as close to Monteriggioni as was Mr. Busato when he took this photo, but the view was rather similar to this, only from further away. It's really breathtaking. For a moment I had the sense of walking through a storybook, because we pretty much don't see such things except in storybooks--at least not in the life I've lived!

So, here's the view from afar, and next post I'll share some "closer-ups."