Beautiful Italy

Well I'm having a lovely time here at The Retreat. We have been drawing and painting everyday with wonderful meals. At the moment I can't upload photos because I can't access the net with my laptop, but maybe we'll get it sorted out tomorrow and you can see a bit of this beautiful country side.

Edit: 9/18/2010 Well sitting in Charlotte, NC waiting for my flight to Phoenix, and actually have a good 'net connection. So here are some of the pictures that should have been with this post!

All the towns here are on the top of the hills. The town here is Force. This was taken from the front yard of the Retreat. The far mountain behind and right of Force is Monte Falconi, or mountain of the falcons. Peregrine falcons nest in the cliffs.  In many ways the people here live much as they did a few hundred years ago. A family have a few acres of farm land, growing grapes, olive, figs, corn, sunflowers, for sale, a garden patch, a few pigs, cows, chickens. About the only differences now are they have electricity and use tractors instead of oxen to plow their fields.