Cortona, Tuscany

We had arranged a week's swap in Perugia in Umbria which fell through. Instead, we decided to stay at the Hotel Italia in Cortona for 4 nights.The town is very beautiful, very hot and crowded with tourists. Yesterday there were markets in the Piazza della Signora, where I bought a white linen pillow slip. There were many things I would have loved to buy but transporting them back home is a slight problem:


I hadn't realised that Cortona is so high. This is the view from the breakfast room of our hotel:

For me, though, the highlight of Cortona is the food. The trattoria are very reasonably priced and the home-made pasta is fantastic. So far, the highlights have been the crostini with a selection of chicken liver, mushroom and tomato spreads, gnocchi with duck and fennel ragu, ravioli with truffle sauce, and vinsanto with biscotti.