Coldigioco, Italy and Surroundings
June 16-20, 2005

Description

The Italian geologist Alessandro Montanari (Sandro) and his family live in Coldigioco, and he runs the Osservatorio Geologico di Coldigioco, where people from all over the world come to study the geology of the region. Several other geologists have houses there as well where they come to stay, work, and relax throughout the year. My aunt went to high school in Syracuse, New York with Sandro's wife, Paula Metallo, and in 1998, my aunt and uncle bought a house in Coldigioco. Small world, eh?

Photos

	Medium Large	View of Coldigioco from a nearby hill.
	Medium Large	Sandro's house.
	Medium Large	Coldigioco has its own church, which is officially consecrated as a real Catholic church. Towns like this, no matter how small, almost always had a tiny church, and there would be priests that went from town to town to give mass.
	Medium Large	Inside the church.
	Medium Large	Pago, Sandro's dog.
	Medium Large	My aunt and uncle's house.
	Medium Large	'Main Street'
	Medium Large	One of the buildings where students and visitors stay.
	Medium Large	Where I stayed.
	Medium Large	Christian Koerbel's house.
	Medium Large	Christian Koerbel's house, again.
	Medium Large	View of the surrounding countryside.
	Medium Large	More of the surrounding countryside.
	Medium Large	The nearby hilltop village of Elcito, which actually still has some inhabitants. The photo doesn't really show how high up the place is. It must have been hard to build.
	Medium Large	Pictures from Elcito || || \/
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large	Nearby town that I can't remember the name of. It's on the way to a lake where I went to go swimming with some of the other people staying in Coldigioco.
	Medium Large	Sheep, which seemed intrigued by our presence.
	Medium Large	The lake.
	Medium Large	Pago was the most enthusiastic swimmer of all of us.
	Medium Large	The Zacchagnini vineyards, which are about 20 minutes from Coldigioco. Very good wine, and much cheaper than you'd pay in a store.
	Medium Large	Pictures from Gubbio. It's a really cool medieval city which is known for its pottery. || || \/
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large
	Medium Large	Sign on one of the roads leading out of Gubbio into the valley where the first K/T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary layer was discovered.
	Medium Large	View of the valley. There's a 14th century aqueduct, which I believe is still in use, running above the right side of the road.
	Medium Large	The K/T boundary, which has been pretty severely chipped away at.
	Medium Large	The sign above the layer, which is not too legible anymore.
	Medium Large	I find it pretty neat that this particular exposure of the K/T boundary lies between a modern road and a 14th century aqueduct.
	Medium Large	The night before I left, there was a pecorino (sheep-milk cheese) festival in nearby Frontale. When this picture was taken, the band was playing a Madonna song. What that had to do with sheep-milk cheese, I have no idea.
	Medium Large	One of the main events was a raffle of salami and other cured meats. As a vegetarian, I thought it would be funny if I won one of the giant prosciuttos that they had there, but luck was not on my side.