Hello there all !

Sorry it has been a while, and sorry that this is not posted from Italy. As many have gathered, I decided to return to England after the Citta Eterna, following a gruesome few days being treated rather less than charitably by nuns. It wasn't just the nuns fault, but it felt like the final straw after two months of exalted and terrible extremes: Italy is a lovely place, but my it is disorganised. To be frank, negotiating The System was driving me insane. Nothing works, or rather nothing is predictable, so one is constantly trying to stave off disaster. Since the Italians are individually extraordinary, disaster was always averted, but not being able to count on anything has its downside. So, given the warnings of death and kidnap, and one or two rather unpleasant encounters in Lazio, plus the sense of the mort de la saison, I decided to come back, cultivate a little patience, and hope that the army deal with the Comorra before the spring. Then, I shall fly into Rome, pick up the Via Appia, and continue where I left off. 

Just in case you perhaps don't understand why I despise and love this country in equal measure, I should like to share with you what happened as I left to fly home. 

I took the Via Appia south, which was a hideous A road and dual carriageway, but, according to the (rubbish) maps, the only route to Ciampino. Once there, I asked the man behind the counter what I needed to get my bike home. The man from Easy Jet said I had to purchase a bike bag. The man from Ryan Air told me to turn my handlebars around. Hence, i phoned my brother (therefore saving 200Euros) and got a flight the next day with O Leary's (alleged) charlatans. 

On returning, naturally enough, it turned out that it wasn't so easy. Ryan air were keen to charge me 15euros per kilo over the 15kg limit. Since I have a bike, you can imagine this turned out to be quite expensive. Like many others, I duly spent some time digging out the heaviest things and putting them into carry on luggage. 

As I stood, at the counter, frankly pretty furious with Mike O Leary and the intransigent rudeness of the silly bint at the desk, a bald headed chap emerged from somewhere and began to take a keen interest in my bike. Giving it the once over, he confessed he used to be a cycle racer, and asked me what I was doing in Italy. We got chatting, as ever, as I told him my adventures, and he asked me why I was going home. 

Now, since he was nice, I toyed with the idea of lying, but eventually, I decided to be honest: I was sick and tired with Italian bureaucracy and inefficiency. I longed for (can you believe it?) Germanic orderliness and things that worked. I was going home to recouperate and marshall my forces to enable me to tolerate another two months of extreme joy and despair. 

Rather to my surprise, he shrugged and agreed with me. 

"Even for the Italians, Italy is exasperating', he said. 

Having given me advice on where to go and what routes were interesting, he was about to leave, when it suddenly occurred to him that the contents of my panniers were all over the floor. He asked me why, and following the honesty is the best policy ethos once again, I told him, 

"Because of the bloody, mercenary, deceitful S**!!ts at Ryan air. "

Nodding in understanding, the man turned to the woman behind the counter. 

 'If this girl is over the weight limit, forget it' he said. 

I goggled in horror, only now seeing the little Ryan Air badge. He merely winked and smiled. When she protested about 'the computer' he snapped back, apparently totally disinterested in her excuses.  

"Just fix it! There is a queue."

Thus I checked my luggage, free of surcharges, and was kissed on both cheeks and sent home.

It didn't end there, amici: passing through security, I was stopped. A handsome Customs officer  informed me I had a knife in my bag. Dash it all!  I had unloaded my first aid kit into my hand luggage, and my Swiss Army knife was in the box! I shook my head and explained, 

"I had to unload my baggage. Is there any way I can go back and check another bag?" 

The guard, looking rather handsome and dashing, may I say, in his uniform, shook his head, "You haven't time."

"Can I send it by post?"

He shook his head again. 

"But it was a present from my brother!" I wailed. "I need it for my bike: its got a bike tool on it!' 

This, it seemed, was the secret code word; the Open Sesame for the Italian Customs.

"You have a bike?" His eyes gleamed. 

"Yes, I just checked it through security."

"Have you, by any chance, any tape?' 

Since, like all cyclists, I carry gaffer tape like a security blanket, I fished in my pocket and drew out the cyclist's answer to all ills. He took it off me, tapped his nose and winked. 

"No promises; but wait there, Signorina. I'll be back."

With that Terminator announcement, the Italian custom's man disappeared whilst I awaited the fate of my knife. Ten minutes later, he returned, giving me the thumbs up sign. 

"I have taped it beneath the luggage label, so they won't see." 

And thus, the wonderful Italians _ for the second time in Ciampino - reminded me why I love and loathe this place. Nothing works, because no one obeys anything inconvenient. They love nothing more than doing exactly what they want. If what they want is against the law, rude, inconvenient...well, its unfortunate, but that's just life. Rules are mere guidelines, there to be assessed in individual circumstances. If they don't roughly concur with what suits, they can be ignored. As a result, the System, usually byzantine and stupid on paper, becomes even more utterly unworkable in fact. I doubt I have ever been to a more ill-disciplined country, nor a country with a more healthy sense of pragmatic tolerance. Everything about Italy is unmanageable, mad and infuriating. I have never been so emotionally labile than in the two months I spent here. But neither have I seen people so ready to help. People rise above the madness with a charm which is infectious. It is chaos, but it is rather marvellous, too. I both despise and adore Italy; it certainly isn't boring. It really is, on all levels, a place of operatic extremes. 

Ciao for now. Watch out for the springtime!

Vx

Hello again. This time from Umbria, although only briefly as tomorrow I drop into Viterbo and hence Lazio, home to a football team for whom Paul Gascoigne, I believe, once played. Oh, and the Citta Eterna...Caput Mundi...Rome!!

But for me, despite the temptation to plunge along the SS No. 2 Via Cassia, and finsh my pilgrimage, Viterbo holds an allure which cannot be denied. Not only one of Italy's most beautiful Renaissance gardens, but the Terme dei Pape - the Pope's own personal sulphurous mud bath. Yes, it is my intention to spend the day blobbing in gloop and having some handsome Italian give me a massage. I am glad to say that I don't think Pope Ratzinger is due to join me, as we all know the German's predeliction for letting it all hang out in the steam room.

But rather than future delights, what of the past, I hear you cry? (you really should modulate your voices). Well, Florence and Umbria have heartened me somewhat, despite the continued travails of the non-open tourist offices. Having seen the cave where St. Francis of Assissi hung out before they built the Basilica of his name, I also feel rather more fatalistic about things. If F of A could live in a 2 by 4 scrape in the ground, I'm sure I could tolerate a night in a field. (though he did die of TB of the spine, so more than one night is not recommended.

But, to be honest, Tuscany's wonders have won me over - most obviously in the stunning 'Renaissance landscapes' of the Val d'Orcia. They are competely unnatural, designed even, by our forebears into an 'ideal of good governance'. But, oh, they are ravishing, and not only I think so, since they have been recognised as extraordinary by UNESCO.

Imagine if you will long slopes of ochre, chocolate and putty coloured land, dotted with the occasional lone cypress. Or long avenues of said cypress snaking along a road, or punctuating the sky along the ridgeline. Each shallow fold seems more perfect than the last, since the men who work this land are truly artists of the ploughshare. They work the fields into all sorts of shapes, so the ridges and furrows catch the light in different directions. It is so empty and tranquil after the big cities of Tuscany: almost a desert under the shifting shadows of an enormous cloudscape. I cannot imagine how it is in the height of summer. Absolutely simmering, and rather surreal, I shouldn't wonder.

On top of all this, of course, are more of Tuscany's gorgeous mediaeval villages, perched above the haze at around 500 m. I have to thank Albino of Saluzzo once again for guiding me to Pienza, truly the most glorious location of anywhere I have visited. The place itself is listed by UNESCO for being a perfect little mediaeval hamlet, but it is the huge panorama of the Val d'Orcia which makes it magnificent. In the morning, I walked along the parapet of the citadel watching the blue valley emerge below, and in the evening, I watched the long shadows fall and the villages glittering above the dark valleys. Radicofani, in the far distance, is the last bastion of Tuscany, and seemed to float in the sky at 800 m.

As you can imagine, all these hill top villages meant lots of slogging climbs, but I am getting used to the effort - reward bargain that is Italian cycling. A racing cyclist who passed me the other day sang out, quoting U2 I believe, 'It is a beautiful day', and I had to agree with him.

Since then, I have loitered with the Sisters in Cortona - a film set city (quite literallly, since they filmed Under the Tuscan Sun here). Despite its fame, it is really rather nice, with the upper town a delightful maze of alleys, Etruscan walls and olive shaded piazzas. Then Perugia, another Etruscan city and home to the famous mentor of Raphael, Perugino (Didn't like him either: very glossy and loud with these horrible little heads of cherubs everywhere). Thence to aforementioned Assissi, and one of the holiest places on earth, which hasn't stopped the Italians building a bloody great autostrada beneath it. But this didn't mar its splendour, at least not for me, since I was adopted there by the marvellous Rita.

Every time I think I have had my lot with Italy, someone like Rita emerges to persuade me otherwise. She was a tour de force; the kind who should work in the tourist office, since she did a lot better finding me accommodation than they did. They were shut - quella sorpresa - and so she took me under her wing and invited me into her shop and spent a good half hour ringing up nuns trying to find me a place for the evening. Since it was coming up to St. Francis's birthday, this was no easy task, but my, she was up to dealing with it. I don't know how many in the 152 convents and monasteries in Assissi she called, but I ended up with the Sisters of St. Brigid of Sweden (except they all seemed to be from India). Thus, I stayed long enough to see the famous frescoes of Giotto that literally changed the history of art forever. But I find I must go and eat, so you will have to wait for that, and the first use of empirical perspective, simple narrative, human scale and 3D volume...

You are, no doubt, relieved.

Ciao

Vx

PS Before I go, I must just mention the simple gorgeousness that was Todi. Another one of those turreted Town Halls with external stairs going to a balcony above the Piazza, just like a mediaeval painting. It occurred to me there that this is what Italy at its best is: the familiar backdrop for so much; from art to the settings of the plays of Shakespeare. Such places are still the hub of civic life: Todi's piazza was a throng of strolling people, old men taking coffee and children playing some kind of British bulldogs. There are times, usually on Sunday mornings, when the church has disgorged the locals into the square, when Italy more than lives up to its billing. Not in the big things, but in the small joys of day to day civic life. I am beginning to realise that Italy is about the extremes of pleasure and frustration.