12 th September

Getting up early for another walk up the hills. I propose to introduce a law that would place resting places on top of the hill rather than down the bottom end of valleys. |It would make walking life so much easier.
It?s an absolutely beautiful day. It?s Tuscany, how I remember it from picking grapes near at San Martino in Ceccione, form (sometimes ?) getting up very early, ;looking at the mist rising against the clear cut landscape.)
Walking uphill, through chestnut woods, pine sometimes, the smell coming out with the day that warms up???when BANG, there goes a gun.
True, I forgot, that more then anything (vipers on hot stones on your path, wild bore running into you, slipping down rocks), a hunter with a gun in Italy is probably as bad as it gets in terms of accidental hazards.
True, I did forget to tell you, that last week, when hunting season opened more than 10 people got killed for all sorts of stupid reasons.
I coughed a lot crawling up that path and made as much human noises as possible.
I also nearly managed to get lost a few times and for the first time on this Bologna-Firenze stretch, it looked like the bloke with the paint pots went astray as well.
I eventually made it up to MONTE SENARIO convent by about 12 am.
I only mention this for two reasons:
1/ This is a sacred mountain, where all sorts of (future) saints had all sorts of funny things happening to the in alls sorts of caves, and I wondered whether the local TABBACCHI cum bar would serve me a well-merited beer or whether this was mineral-water-out-of-the-rock-country only.
2/ The counter of the bar was about 10 metres in length. I?m not joking. This was a bar of religious proportions in a very religious place.
I ordered my beer from the old buddy who was in charge of the place and (incidentally) did not reply to me greeting him. He moved up about 2 metres from my original ordering point, to get the bottle out of the fridge, and then went on to place the bottle another metre further away from me on the counter.
I don?t want to be unkind, but he did look a bit dumb, so I moved over the three metres to get my drink. I would also like to point out that I was the only customer in the place.
I had taken out some postcards from his display and asked him whether he was selling stamps as well, and he did, which made life easier for me.
Two stamps for 800 lira please, which he duly placed on the counter about four metres away from me, and about 1 metre left to my original entry point of transactions with him.
I was wondering now?.
What would happen if I asked him where the letterbox was? Would he dismount it from the place it was mounted on a wall and put back somewhere unreachable?
Much more clever than that he was. When I asked, his face lit up and he walked me out of the door to show me that the letterbox was located just right below the arches on the side of his bar. This was to prove to me that all the silly customers coming into his bar were incapable to notice that box.
I?m not necessarily going to that place again soon, because I?m not that religious either, really.

Downhill from here, with the first sight of the Brunelleschi cupola in the mist of Florence fog. Emotional, I have to admit. I was thinking of all the people I would meet down there and beyond, ?nel Chianti?. About three hours of walk left, literally strolling down the hills in view of Florence, in a very hot sun, cypress, pines dry dust, these sort of flying grasshoppers on the path I had completely forgotten about, a ballet of butterflies?..