Lunch Under Italian Laundry

Today, we traveled to Arezzo to explore its historic center.  We drove on back roads to get there, through stunningly beautiful scenery with vineyards and olive groves and beautiful villas dotting the hillsides under a deep blue sky.

We strolled the cobbled streets and admired the wonderful old buildings and the fantastically lopsided Piazza Grande, which, our guide book states, "began sinking at one end almost as soon as it was laid out around 1200, and it's been unstoppable since."  We peered in shop windows, peeked into the Pieve di Santa Maria and admired Pietro Lorenzetti's 1320 polyptych of the Madonna and Child with Saints on the high altar, discovered the Basilica di San Francesco was closed at the time we were able to see it, and then decided to have lunch in the loggia designed by Georgio Vasari on the Piazza Grande.

There was the most wonderful, whimsical laundry sculpture that wound its way through the archways of the loggia and throughout other areas of the historic district.  I couldn't help thinking, "Alice Waters can eat her heart out at her French Laundry ... we're enjoying lunch under the Italian Laundry!"

Off to a wine tasting in an hour or so, and then on to (another!) meal ... it's a rough life!