We arose early and were out the door at 8:30 walking to the Piazza Grande, the largest piazza in town and closest to our apartment. This is the piazza with the city hall and the cathedral.

It is small things that make us realize that we are in a corner of the world and not a hub. For example, we went to the piazza to have a cappuccino and read the USA Today newspaper to find out what is going on in the world. Our TV, we have two actually, only speak Italian. No new season of TV shows for us, or football games or baseball playoff and World Series games. Wow, that sounded like a whine about being in Tuscany!

ANYHOW, this is Tuesday. The edition of the USA Today that arrived this morning is: Monday. Didn’t matter though, I can’t change the hard news and Monday recaps all of the college games (From Saturday!). I did find out that the Islamic world now hates Italy and especially the Pope. Way to go Mr. Pope. I thought we were off the radar here but apparently we are the new ground zero.

After lunch we drove to Cortona where I spent six days 18 months ago. I took Ann to the hotel where I had stayed and Ann met Silvia the beautiful lady at the front desk of this tiny seven room hotel who tended to my needs when Ann was at the cooking school. No, not those needs! Silvia showed us the new swimming pool that she was quite proud of. We then walked down the road to Bramasole, Francis Mayes house from "Under the Tuscan Sun". We made dinner reservations for Sunday evening for their restaurant.

Tonight Ann is cooking Ribolita, a peasant soup from the region. We are now off to see the sunset over the Fortezza (fortress).

We engaged in the time honored Italian tradition of the passagiata this evening. Every evening after work and before dinner which traditionally begins around eight, citizens of the town go for a stroll and meet neighbors to engage in the day’s gossip. Tonight going to view the sunset we met a young couple wearing a University of Oregon shirt. We talked about what we knew of THE game and how amazing the last moments were and how Oklahoma went down to defeat. Then we discussed with the other renters in the building, Americans from New Orleans, about what we were having for dinner. Wow, it was like an American passaginata.

Lesson for Day 15: It may be slow here and the big excitement of the evening is a meeting of neighbors but this beats the Nightly News with Katie Couric and three hours of TV.