This is the view from the villa's lending library: the vineyard immediately adjacent. We have a few vines and a fig tree on the premises, and apparently you can walk to one of the neighboring vineyards with an empty jug and have them fill it with table chianti.
The city center is a short hike away, down a steep one-lane road along which cars hurtle at terrific speeds despite the numerous blind driveways and side streets. You turn right at the aqueduct, and walk a ways more to the scala mobile, a series of escalators--why not?--that help you up the hill towards a high medieval wall. Apart from the aqueducts and the medieval walls and the Duomo, there are aspects of the landscape that remind me of Las Cruces, especially in this heat: the ground tends to be dry and rocky, with tufts of scrub grass rather than an even green cover, and sometimes you glimpse a tiny lizard scurrying out of the way.
Got my first glimpse of the week-by-week curriculum today (classes start next week, after everyone has settled in). It looks like we'll have daily movement and voice work for the first month, which is fantastic. Less clown than I was hoping for--some classes are of necessity based on the schedules of performers who teach when they can--but at least the clown will be all day, every day, while it lasts.
Anyone who goes to Italy should document the food, so I should mention the fantastic spicy mushroom-tomato ragout I had last night at a bruschetteria. For free. They left out a number of primi piatti--toasted bread, foccaccia, squares of puff-pastry panini with prosciutto and mozzarella, beets, a pineapple-ham salad, mortadella, deviled eggs--and people sat out in the plaza and chatted and snacked over their beer and wine. It's a very nice way to eat.
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