Sillico, Italy

Before we leave Italy I wanted to introduce a little gem called Sillico, right up the hill from the house where we stayed. I think you'd be hard pressed to find it in a guidebook and the one restaurant is pretty mediocre but it is a tiny, magical place of just 92 residents; a good number of the buildings appearing to be abandoned. A sign outside the entrance at the edge of a parking lot (you can't drive on the steep and narrow cobblestone streets) says it was first mentioned as a community in 952 AD under the jurisdiction of Fosciana's parish church. At the very front of the community some of the homes were being fixed up while little treasures like what appeared to be an outdoor eating area in the back were succumbing to time and neglect. All the pictures in this post are from Sillico.

Today we went to Florence for my mom's last day. I'm starting to think that I'm a bad tourist. I just couldn't handle another line/crowd and so I let everyone see the David without me in favor of sitting on the curb outside to read Machiavelli's The Prince (a steal at just 3.50 Euros!). As a bonus, I got to listen to a street performer belt out some pretty fantastic opera. This trip to Florence and all our Medici-related sightseeing made me wish that I'd made even a half-hearted effort to pay attention in my Italian Political Thought class in grad school. Who knew that would ever come in handy? But before you judge me too much Gentle Reader, consider that my professor skipped a good third of the classes on account of an ill cat. Ahhh San Francisco State, that alumni check is in the mail.

At any rate, tomorrow concludes almost a month in Italy and we will be catching an 11 hour ferry over to Croatia, arriving on the coastal town of Split. We're a little late in the season but we're hoping to skip the crowds and still catch some sunny beach days.