Arezzo and Monterchi

After leaving Florence, we drove through the Chianti region, keeping to curvy back roads so Eddie could sleep for a while. We stopped for lunch at La Loggettina in Impruneta. It started raining, which helped him fall asleep after we set off again. (Eddie doesn't sleep very much on car rides, unlike most babies; but if he's tired enough and we sing a long lullaby, it might work.)

After a nice nap, we got to Arezzo, where we spent the night. It's a very charming little place, much more relaxed than Florence, with nice pedestrian streets and beautiful (but really steep!) piazzas. Eddie took another nap soon after we got settled in to the hotel, while Nonno and Anne went to explore the city. After Eddie got up, we went to join them, and they took us to a playground they'd found behind the Duomo (cathedral) at the top of the city! On the way, Eddie climbed a really steep street on his own, meowed at some cats and woofed at some dogs. Then he got distracted by looking at a big statue of Petrarch, who was born in Arezzo. Finally he got to the playground and played on the swings and a slide.

For some reason, dozens of lines full of laundry were hung over the Piazza of the Duomo—it looked like an installation, not actual laundry. There was more in the main piazza (Piazza Grande). Also, in a courtyard just off the Piazza del Duomo, Nonno found a life-sized inflatable bulldozer. Eddie thought that was pretty strange. We got dinner at Caffé dei Costanti in front of the church of St. Francis. Then Eddie ran around splashing his hands in puddles (a practice we're not sure we approve of.)  After dinner Eddie really enjoyed riding piggy-back on Papa (he used my arms like levers, lifting them up, then pushing them down, then laughing.) We snuck around the top side of Piazza Grande. When Anne saw us, she came running up from the bottom of this big, steep piazza, and Eddie (sitting on my shoulders) couldn't stop laughing the whole time she was running up.

The next morning, after exploring Arezzo a little more and having a morning nap, we hit the road for Urbino. For lunch, we stopped at Monterchi, a really nice little Tuscan village. We had lunch at Una Terrazza in Toscana (A Terrace in Tuscany). Before eating, Eddie and I explored the village a little bit:

Then Eddie worked on learning to slurp pasta!

It turned out that right next to our restaurant was a museum which had the Madonna del Parto, a famous painting by Piero della Francesca that Nonno knew. Every little town in Italy is like that—the smallest hamlet will have some important artwork and a picturesque church. We went to see the painting, and the ticket also covered a Museum of Scales nearby, so we went to see that too. That was two stories filled with scales, of all different designs, for weighing lots of different things. It was a strange little museum!
Eddie was walking down a steep path when he tripped and fell. It was so steep that he couldn't stop, and he scraped his forehead along the stones until his head bonked into a metal post. The poor guy! He's okay, though, besides a big scrape on his forehead. He cheered up pretty fast.