Views and Stripes

And as far as the first of these items go, this is now 'my' view from the garden at Hettie's place. One can see far across the Crete Senese from her great flat in the Tartuca contrada, where she is kindly letting me stay in her guest room until I will move into my new abode- inchallah, in the early New Year? I will be 'dog sitting' her lovely labrador Bonnie in November, and in fact 'cat sitting' too, for she has two cats. So my days in Via Roma have come to an end- a whole year in that flat which became so familiar, and in which  I was able to welcome many friends in the past year. 

Hetties place is just around the corner from my new flat, so I can pop in just about every day and check progress.

And from one great view to another spectacular one: this is the view from the Piazza dei Martire in Volterra, one of the many towns which I had  not yet visited in Tuscany. And what a town! It is quite breath taking- the spectacular scenery during the bus journey between Colle Val d'Elsa and Volterra literally brought tears of joy and amazement to my eyes- and this wonderful Roman town itself- even older than Siena, and - dare I say it- even more beautiful perhaps..

Here too, one sees a lot of those black and white stripes that make Siena Cathedral so spectacular:

It was market day in Volterra, where I stayed for lunch before heading off to Cecina on the bus, in pursuit of more black and white stripes: 

Those strange flat stones, found  on the beach at Cecina, which I hope to use somehow in one of the bathrooms at Casato di Sopra...

If you zoom in above you will see...I filled up a little rucksack while some people  were still sun bathing.

P.S. Forgot! Who is Hettie? Well, she's a Texan friend of a friend, introduced to me recently- she, just like I,  have decided to make Siena her home- at least for the foreseeable few years. She is part of a growing set of friends, both expats and Italians. I am not used to seeing mostly women though, but this seems to be the way here...