Walks
Tag Archives: Italy travel
Learn Italian in Song: Via Con Me
(Come) Away with Me
Paolo Conte, 1981. Below is the Neri per Caso version that first introduced me to the song.
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Gallery: Tirano, October 2007
I took so many great pictures during our visit to the Sertoli Salis winery in Tirano (Valtellina) that I couldn’t use them all even in three pages, so here they are. Some are fuzzygraphs because I did not want to use flash on the interior frescoes, but I’ve included them anyway to give you at least a fuzzy idea what they look like.
Gallery: The Abbey at Piona
We’ve visited this beautiful medieval abbey in northern Lake Como several times, but apparently I’ve never posted any of my photos. This set is from a visit in September, 2007.
On in-season weekends, you can reach Piona on the Lake Como ferry.
Gallery: Santa Maria del Tiglio, Gravedona
While visiting friends on the other side of Lake Como, we stopped by the lakeside town of Gravedona and visited the cemetery and the medieval church of St. Maria del Tiglio (St. Mary of the Linden Tree).
As you can see, family vaults are kept over generations and centuries, and are well maintained. This is possible in a culture where families simply don’t move around much. When families have moved away from their roots, people will sometimes travel on November 1st (Ognissanti – All Saints’) to spruce up their family graves elsewhere in Italy. Religious organizations hang around the cemeteries that day to sell pre-printed tags that you can hang on your family vault to show you’ve been there (in case your dead ancestors didn’t notice?), and florists – who tend to cluster around cemeteries – do a booming business as well.