Heading on down to the beach!

 

Ciao!

Up this morning about 6, but breakfast wasn’t served until 8, so we did have some time to kill.

It had actually sprinkled last night as we were falling asleep, and rained again sometime during the night, but we woke up to a much less cloudy but gray day.  I have come to the decision that this room is probably one of the smallest in which we have ever stayed, and to make matters worse there is quite literally NO place to put things!  So, everything looks very messy, but not much can be done about it!  There is one long counter where we’ve got the computer and the television, but it is rather narrow, and not very accommodating. 

One of the tumulus type of tombs

A "shrine" type

Another tumulus

Looking out over the bay

Sarcophagus tombs

Temple type

Huge stone sheets for the roof

Interior of a tomb, with carved "legs"

Piombino walls

Elba!

Etruscan painted temple decoration

Ship-wrecked coins brought to life!

Piombino bay

Wonderful carving in Massa museum!

Town square in the evening!

Waiting for pizza!

It was excellent!

Lovely small city!

Caught!  Yum!!!

We also have to find room for bathroom “stuff” but as there are very low and tiny night stands, things do get into interesting places.  The shower is also interesting, as it is squeezed in between the bathroom sink and toilet, and the toilet is immediately opposite that ever-useful creation called the bidet, there is not much room to move around in.  Fortunately, the balcony is nice and the view is great, and the bed is comfortable.  

Down for breakfast at 8 am and ran into an interesting assortment of fellows who all seem to be here with yoga mats and bicycles.  We’re thinking they are probably Scandinavian of some sort, but there are vehicles here from Switzerland and Austrian so hard to tell.  Other than the cyclists, we didn’t run into any other guests.  The breakfast was okay, except for the fact that R’s choice of coffee from the noisy machine, ended up giving him something like a third of a cup.  I suggested he run some hot water into it, and he tried that with a second cup, that that was too weak.  So … one is too strong, and the other is too weak – we’ll see what he decides to do tomorrow morning.

Out the door about 9 am and heading to Populonia, the Etruscan city built at the waterfront.

One thing that we’ve discovered about the Etruscans is that they were really very strong individualists, with their loyalties really to their family and city and not to any kind of Etruscan nation.  We had read in the past about the Etruscan League which was apparently made up of twelve Etruscan cities.  The thing that is interesting is that the cities kept changing.  There appeared to always be twelve of them, just not always the same ones.  Additionally, we have read that on more than one occasion, one or the other of the Etruscan cities has appealed to another Etruscan city (also member of the “league”) for assistance with overcoming some enemy – usually the Romans.  However, just because they were both members of the same league, was no guarantee that another city would come to the rescue of the other, and on more than one occasion, an Etruscan city was left to fend (usually unsuccessfully) for itself.  We found that very odd somehow but I guess it goes with the “family/city” first, as the Etruscans never appeared to be a nation in any way.

We arrived at the Populonia Archaeological Park and walked up the long walkway to the visitor center.  There, some very nice folks explained about the three different sites we could visit.  There were already two elementary school groups in the area, but once we started out, we quite literally had the place to ourselves!  Until now, we hadn’t realized just how many different types of Etruscan tombs there were!  We had visited shaft tombs and tumuli in the past.  Shaft tombs are basically shafts dug into the ground, and then funerary urns were placed one on top of the other.  The tumuli were large stone buildings, some dug into the earth or some just set on top of the earth with doors and entrance passages.  The dead could then be placed on a shelf for burial or their ashes deposited in an urn with dirt and debris then mounded on top of the tumulus.  (Actually, here in Populonia, the area contained many different types of mines – lead, silver, copper – and the slag was used to try and successfully hide a tomb.  In one, instance it appears that at least one tumulus collapsed as a result of the weight of the slag.)  

Here, though, were new types – both the “Temple” tomb, as well as individual sarcophagus tombs. The Temple tombs were built on rock platforms to look like small temples, with a rock roof on top.  Very interesting!

Having visited the variety of tomb sites (and me banging my head on one very low entrance passage), we decided to head into Piombino (today’s name for the city) to visit their museum.  As it was past lunch time, we stopped at McDonald’s for a quick sandwich, and then followed signage to the museum.  

Piombinois a lovely city, and it’s also the port city for ships to Elba, which can be seen very clearly across the water (6 miles away).  It takes about 40 minutes on one of the ferries to get there, and it looks like they do have a lot of cross-water traffic.  Elba was (and probably still is!) a mining area where the Etruscans would gather raw material that would then be shipped back to Populonia for smelting and working into finished goods. The museum was right on the bay, which was really beautiful.  There were even some people sunbathing on the rocks below, although we didn’t see anyone brave enough to go into the water.  

We had the museum quite literally to ourselves, and fortunately, when we were looking through the collection, lights in the next gallery would be springing on automatically in front of us.  Included in the collection were artifacts discovered from an ancient ship wreck and successfully brought to light just a couple of years ago.  My favorite was a huge stack of coins now all welded together; seriously, we’re talking a lot of coins here.  They are now kept in a climate-controlled water environment to preserve them as they were found.  Incredibly interesting!  (We had first come across underwater archaeology in Turkey, where Texas A & M – the first school to develop underwater archaeology as a major! – had explored a ship wreck)

By now it was almost 2 pm on a very warm and balmy day – so instead of heading to Vetuloniawe decided to head back to Massa and take naps instead!  Brilliant use of time!  

Up an hour or so later, and are now thinking of heading up the hill into town and the Massa Marittima museum!

More later!

m

xxx

Just back from our walk up the hill to the center of town!  We first went to the Archaeological Museum, which was interesting.  It had a very large section on Neolithic finds from the area. We saw several things – one that we are going to look for in Florence, as well as a stele that had hands and a face on it!  Definitely my very favorite thing today!  The Etruscan portion of the museum wasn’t great, but the building itself was interesting and we enjoyed it.

From the museum, we decided that a pizza was sounding good for dinner.  We had had so much food last night, that we thought a break would be nice. So, we found 3 Arches restaurant on the main piazza, where there were several tables already occupied by non-smoking folks, and ordered our dinner. A glass of Prosecco for me, and a glass of local red for R, sparkling water and a pizza with tomato, mozzarella, prosciutto and porcini mushrooms.  It was GREAT, and we very much enjoyed it.  Also, for once, we ordered one pizza to share, (it is usual in Italy for each person to order their own pizza) and it was perfect!  Just enough!  We then walked through the town – it is really a lovely place! And I got a great gelato for dessert!  What a way to end the day!  By this time, it had started to sprinkle, just like last night, so we headed back to the hotel.  Not really wet or anything, just sprinkled on and coolish.  We are now in for the night!

Lots of love,

m

xxx