Sunday Morning in Marta - Lakeside

Coffee first!

Last Sunday was a lovely sunny morning so we decided to spend the morning down at the lake, have a coffee, take a stroll and watch the Club 500 Montefiascone Car Rally that was passing through, with a checkpoint at the Borgo del Pescatori.  My photos will tell the story of our morning.

Those of you familiar with Marta either virtually through reading this blog for awhile or in reality will notice that the water level in the lake is lower than ever! Even with the little recent rainfall we have had there are beaches appearing where we personally have never seen them before. It is worrying it looks like we are going to need a very wet winter to restore levels. 

Then the cars started arriving, at the checkpoint.

  

Here are a few of my favourite cars!

After watching the rally cars pass through we continued our walk and headed home.

                               23-09-2012 Sunday Morning in Marta - Lakeside

My slideshow presentation of the the car rally and our walk is about five minutes long, so if you do not have time to view now, do call back and do so another time. 

Alternatively if you are unable to view the slideshow, ( I know some of my readers have slow internet connections that do not give them the choice of doing so) you may view the photos via My Flickr account in the album entitled Sunday Morning in Marta - Lakeside

The following paragraph will explain why the cars were in Marta on Sunday morning.

F-EST! EST! EST!

Roads & Word

Vintage Cars and Cultural Events

Commemoration of the circuit of Lake Bolsena F- Est! Est! Est! Roads and Words was organised by Club 500 Montefiascone

under the patronage of the Municipality of Montefiascone, in collaboration with the Cultural Association "TusciaE20", ACI and Veteran Car Club of Viterbo.

It was proposed to implement a weekend that united culture and passion for motoring, through the presentation of books and the presence of historic cars of prestige, with the intention of promoting the history, monuments, places and products Montefiascone and Tuscia.

If you are interested in more information about the event follow the link to New Tuscia or the Facebook Page for the Est Est Est 500 Club in Montefiascone. Club 500 Montefiascone

I am going to be busy with other projects over the winter so I will not be posting anything like as often here as I did during the summer months. Also see what I had to say previously here, about not wanting to repeat posts. I am not deserting you and hopefully will be keeping the Facebook Page updated for those of you that would like to keep in touch there.

Otherwise I hope to be back with a post or two during the latter part of October.

Assisi - Through My Camera Lens

On April 22nd 1972 David and I got married and came to Italy for our honeymoon, as we had already developed a shared love of this beautiful country. We decided that we would like to celebrate this years special Ruby Wedding Anniversary and forty years of marriage quietly just the two of us.
We chose Assisi as somewhere we would like to spend a few days. We spent two nights there at the Hotel Pallotta which I have posted about specifically on my Travel Tales blog. It was the perfect choice, not very far away from us to drive but rather than do a tourists rush exploration we had time to stroll around and soak up the atmosphere, which I hope to share with you via this selection of photographs. We did visit a couple of other Umbrian towns on the way to Assisi and on the way home again which I hope may be the subjects of other posts sometime.


If you are interested in more photos from the weekend they can be viewed in my Flickr Albums Umbria Weekend - April 2012 

                                                                Hotel Pallotta

Assisi is a town and local commune (council area), in the province of Perugia in the region of Umbria on the western slopes of Monte Subasio at 400 metres. The town is built of white and rose coloured stone and has retained its charm for many centuries with its narrow steep and winding roads. Despite the many tourists, wander away from the main areas and you are taken back to another era.

Famous as the birthplace of St Francis, who founded the Franciscan religious order in Assisi in 1208 and St Clare who formed the Poor Sisters, later known as the Order of the Poor Clares.   Assisi contains many examples of  the genius and creativity of the human race stretching right back to the Middle Ages, so it is no surprise that since 2000 the town has been listed on Unesco's World Heritage List.

As mentioned earlier this collection of collages of my photos are casual shots taken during our wanderings so I have left them unlabelled for informality. The main tourist attractions are all easily identified from guidebooks in print and on-line for those of you not already familiar with the town. My intention is just to try and share some of the atmosphere via the photos not provide a historical or factual post.

There are plenty of sources for those of you that are interested in reading more about the history of Assisi, stating with Wikipedia and Assisi Online.

 That is the end of the Assisi tour as seen through the lens of my camera, which I hope has been of interest.

Assisi Coat of Arms with thanks to Wikipedia, the rest of the photos are my own from My Flickr Photo Albums Umbria Weekend - April 2012 


I have decided that I will also publish posts that are about our travel within Italy on my other blog Travel Tales as it is attracting a different selection of readers.

Our Garden in March - Il Nostro Giardino in Marzo

Last year from February until September I published a regular post on News From Italy entitled 'Our Garden' at the end of every month. It was a popular feature and I have decided that now the plants have caught up after The Big Freeze in Lazio and that Spring has finally arrived it should be revived.


I hope you will enjoy sharing these collages of photos taken around our garden this month.

First to show colour were the daffodils with the first ones blooming at the very start of March, with the different varieties spread throughout the month. As I write they are all but over now, nothing is lasting very long this Spring with the combination of warmth and no rain to speak of.  Everyone has started watering, mainly their vegetables of course, but it is very early to need to do so!

Our Persimmon Tree.

One of our Walnut Trees.

Our Orto.

The fruit trees have given us beautiful displays of blossom this month with the Apricot the first to emerge closely followed by the Peach and the Cherry

Last month the leaves on our Camellia were looking very burnt and I really had not much hope for the blooms, but they survived and are actually looking better than normal, as often the Spring rains ruin them, not this year.

                                                   Some general views of the garden.

Other splashes of Spring colour were provided by a mixture of plants both cultivated and wild. 

Cerinthe, Wallflowers and Tulip photographed early morning 30th March 2012.

White Irises, Sweetpeas and Blue Irises photographed early morning 30th March 2012.

The interested gardeners and photographers amongst you will find the full album on Flickr.  Our Garden in March 2012 where the photos can be viewed in a larger format. 
 All rights reserved by LindyLouMac Photo Collection


I also have a lot of Spring flower photographs that I have not shared here but will be doing so on my photography blog.      LindyLouMac's World in Photos   
                
Do follow along if you are interested in photography as I would love to see you there.

Have a lovely weekend wherever you are in the world and however you plan to spend your time.

Marta Mercato

Summer Blogging is for me very much about less words and more photos. Having fun in the sun with family and friends that visit us over the summer months is after all what living in in Italy is supposed to be about, whenever the opportunity arises to spend time with those we love.
I therefore don't want to spend too much time at the computer researching and writing posts but I do still want to share our day to day life with you all in 'News From Italy'.
Meandering around our local markets is something that seems to hold a certain fascination for many of our guests.  So today I am sharing some photographs of our local market in Marta. It is held along the lakeside every Thursday morning throughout the year, but the number of stall holders that visit and the goods they sell is very seasonal.
In this region of Italy markets are still of great importance to the locals, many of whom never travel much further afield than their own localities. They can still rely on the weekly visiting markets to provide most things that they need for day to day living that they can not produce for themselves.
You will find the butcher, the baker, the grocer, the greengrocer, the fishmonger and the plant salesman for both flowers and vegetable plants alongside the ironmongers and china stalls.  Every item of clothing you will ever need can be obtained from the market, one man who has a shop elsewhere will even measure you for a suit if required. Shoes, hats ,handbags and other items such as scarves can always be found. If you need curtains, rugs, material for sewing, yes these are here also.
When my sister was staying with us earlier this month I took a series of photos of the weekly market one Thursday morning and a few more last week when we were there with our daughter, the full selection can be viewed on Flickr in My Album entitled Marta Mercato.










You may have guessed that the lady whom I seem to be stalking around the market is none other than my sister!


I hope you have enjoyed this little tour of Marta Mercato.