Our Excellent Italian Adventure – Part 8
More Chianti, More Tuscany, More Everything
As it’s Monday today, we were planning on picking up a few more of the things that we were looking to get for our kitchen in the way of food supplies. Having a kitchen in our villa allows us to be a little more selective as to what we’ll be eating for breakfast – more fresh fruits and the like.
Barb and I were thinking that we’ve never really spent this much time together with Peter and Liz (it’s now been 12 days since we’ve arrived in Italy) and so far we’re happy to say that for the most part, we all seem to be getting along together.
It’s not a minor concern as Barb and I were wondering before we left if after a week or two we all wouldn’t be speaking to each other anymore. I think that the driving part of the trip definitely adds more stress to the day as it’s pretty easy to get lost on the road and knowing when to turn off to get us to the right town is often a lot of stress. We’ve already had our fair share of arguments in the car but so far no blood has been spilt. 🙂
We’ve already found that a single wrong turn can add a half an hour or more of extra driving before you decide that you need to turn around and go back so it’s not just a matter of going round the block again.
I’ve been the sole driver so far so the job of navigation hasn’t something that I’ve had to deal with.
I posted Part 7 of Our Excellent Adventures today in Siena which was the first stop and where we stayed most of the day. Since arriving in Italy, I have had Internet access in both hotels in Rome and Sorrento so posting our Adventure journals has been pretty easy in those locations. Here in our Tuscany villa, I’m now without any Internet access “in house” so I’m still composing the journals on my Pocket PC every night as before but need to find an Internet cafe somewhere to post them.
While in the city of Sienna, I was able to find a cafe with wireless Internet access and got online from there. While I had made a point of printing out lists of wireless Internet “hotspots” in all of the cities that we planned on going to I have found that it is often just easier to ask someone where the nearest Internet location is. More often than not, the places on my list are nowhere near where we are so they’re not very convenient.
Anyway, what this all means is that I don’t see any problems continuing to regularly post to my web site in our Tuscany part of our trip.
As I mentioned, we decided to drive to Siena today which is about 45 minutes away by car. The weather has been good to us since arriving in Tuscany and it was again sunny today and about 22 degrees. I checked the weather for the region when I was online at the Internet cafe today and we should expect some sun the rest of the week but no rain. This was good news to us as we’ve definitely seen our share of rain so far on the trip – especially in Sorrento.
Siena is like many other old European towns in that it has the more modern city surrounding a central “old town” (or centro storico as it is known locally) – often which used to be encircled with a stone wall. Our day in Siena was exclusively in the old town.
One of the major sights in Siena is the central square called Piazza del Campo. The Piazza is a huge semi-circle shaped area which has a prominent tower in front area. The word Siena red is synonymous with a light red brick colour which can be found almost everywhere in the town – most especially in the Piazza del Campo.
The old part of Siena is one of those places that seems to have just the right ambience that appeals to me and when we were leaving, I was thinking that it would have been nice to stay here several days, not just hours.
One of the other major attractions of Siena is the huge cathedral: Il Duomo. Unfortunately it was at this time that I split up with Barb, Liz and Peter as I went to find an Internet cafe to post Part 7. As it turned out, this was unfortunate timing as they all told me that the Duomo was an incredible sight and the design and architecture was truly unique. Well, maybe on our next trip to Italy I’ll get to see it. 😉
After we left Siena, we headed south in search of a town called Montalcino. Barb had found the name of this town as the place where Brunella wine is made so we head out in that direction.
Montalcino ended up being situated at the top of a hill in the middle of an area mostly made up of vineyards. In truth, most of the Chianti region is made up of vineyards so in this case it wasn’t all that distinct.
We walked around the town and found that the vast majority of the shops were selling wine. This was quite different to any other town we had been in so far.
Barb and I commented that this town reminded us of the French town of Chateau Neuf de Pape where we visited and bought some wine last year. It too was mostly a wine-centric town and the majority of the stores were also those selling wine. As in Chateau Neuf de Pape, we all walked out of Montalcino carrying several bottles of wine which will travel home with us.
After leaving Montalcino, we needed to refill our groceries again so we made a stop at a local supermarket and bought several bags worth in the nearest “big” town of Poggibonsi. After doing groceries, we had dinner in a small trattoria in that town.
Although it is only our third day in Tuscany, by the end of the day we are starting to get a better feel for where things are and which roads are which. This definitely will help for tomorrow as we will be making our return visit to Florence to spend the day.
A Day in Amazing Florence
Since early Monday morning, we were all woken up by the meowing of the local cat. After opening our front door, the cat came walking into our villa like it owned the place. We have since named the cat El Gato after the cat whom we found under similar circumstances in our house in Spain where Barb and I stayed two years ago. Since we began feeding El Gato, he has made a point of being here when we come back home at night as well as first thing in the morning.
We suspect that the cat has made a career of mooching off of all of the people who stay at the villa – especially the ones who feed him.
We planned on spending all of Tuesday today in Florence (Firenze to the Italians) so we made an early start and got to Florence by about 10:00 this morning.
The first major job was to find a parking spot close enough to the old city but far enough so it would be easy get to. Unfortunately, we ended up going too far and ended up having to park in a parking garage almost right in the old town. The streets were so narrow that once or twice I was either rubbing my tires on the curb to avoid hitting parked mopeds or I was hitting parked mopeds with my rear view mirror to get by.
We ended up having to give our car keys to the parking attendant when we left the garage. I had this thought about the parking attendants taking our car for a joy ride like on the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But I figured that since we were driving a Ford Focus wagon and not a Ferrari convertible, we were probably OK.
The first stop that Barb and Liz wanted to go to was a famous bridge in Florence called Ponte Vecchio. Ponte Vecchio is not so much of a bridge than it is a big shopping area. Along both sides of the bridge are a few dozen jewellery shops along with about 10,000 tourists.
I would not be overstating it by saying that Ponte Vecchio is probably the most touristy spot in all of Italy.
As Liz and Barb wanted to spend some time here going through all of the jewellery stores (at an excruciatingly slow pace at that), Peter and I went off to explore some of the sights in the area.
We had thought that it would be a good idea to try and see some of the great museums in Florence but we did not have any advanced reservations in place and didn’t have the time to wait in line so sadly there were no museum visits on this trip to Florence for us.
Once we caught up with Liz and Barb, we started to walk around the old town stopping in and out of stores and churches. One of the most significant architectural sites in Florence is the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral – most commonly known as the Duomo. If you happen to see any guide book for Florence, it’s likely that the Duomo will be on the cover. It’s the St. Peter’s basilica of Florence.
The outside of the Duomo is an incredible red, black and white design and the imposing dome fills the skyline which mere photographs cannot do justice. Standing on the street and looking at the Duomo from side to side, it’s hard to imagine that something so large with so much architectural detail is standing in front of you. Having no equivalent of the Vatican’s St. Peter’s square to frame the Duomo, it’s monstrous size just sits on a regular street corner, dwarfing everything else in sight.
Interestingly enough, we were somewhat disappointed with the interior of the Duomo. Judging from the exterior size and design, we were half expecting a repeat of the stunning detail of the interior of St. Peter’s basilica. Unfortunately, the Duomo is fairly plain in comparison. We all commented that we must now be so jaded that incredible works of art and architecture now leave us walking away, uninterested.
After more shopping, we met up and arranged to have an early dinner at around 6:30 in Florence before driving the 40 minutes back to the villa.
The place we went for dinner is called Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco which means the White Boar in English. It seems that 95% of the time we are experiencing a great meal in restaurants here and tonight was no different.
Some of the staples that we have been having with our dinners are two popular appetizers: prosciutto with melon and bruschetta. Sometimes mislabelled as “ham” on the English translation on menus, prosciutto always seemed to be served in copious quantities and when eaten with a sweet melon or cantaloupe, the combination of sweet and salty are a delicious marriage.
You can be sure that prosciutto and melon will be an ongoing addition to our dinners at home.
The other favourite is bruschetta. I had read on several web sites that there was some discussion about the pronunciation of bruschetta as either being bru-shetta or bru-sketta. In every case where we have ordered this (in about 5 or 6 different towns or cities in Italy), the waitress has always called it bru-sketta.
We have been making a similar Catalonian appetizer to bruschetta that we picked up in Barcelona called Pamb ad Tomaquet. The main difference is that bruschetta seems to be served “assembled” and the Catalonian version is put together at the table. I suppose that there are probably several variations to each one.
On Italian Shopping
Barb wanted me to write something on her shopping experiences so far in Italy. I had asked her how she had been finding the selection of items in the (many, many) stores she and Liz had been going to.
She said that she was somewhat disappointed in the overall shopping experience so far in comparison to what it was like in France and Spain. The main difference is that there doesn’t seem to be any department stores (or department stores of any significant size) that they have found here so far. In addition, most of the individual stores and boutiques, which are the bulk of where things are sold here, don’t seem to have the same depth of selection as was seen in those other countries – especially France.
Barb was quick to say that it’s not like there’s nothing to buy here and that there is no selection – far from it. It’s just that she had seen more selection in other countries.
In our last leg of our trip: Milan, we’re hoping that this will all turn around as it is truly the fashion capital of Italy if not all of Europe.
Down Day
It’s Wednesday today and officially one week left before we return home from Italy. After all of the running around that we did yesterday in Florence and with many of us either still trying to shake our colds or otherwise feeling run down we decided to make today a day of rest.
While we have some plans to go out later on in the day, we all woke up several hours later than usual this morning and have spent the day so far just relaxing around the villa or by the pool.
After being a bit cooler yesterday, it’s warmed up a bit to the low 20’s and sunny so it’s a nice day to be doing nothing. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be back on the road again and have plans to drive west towards the coast and visit several other towns in the process.
Baden
One Comment
john phillips
Hi all , Nice to see you are all enjoying your selves .
Thank you for the emails . they are very nice.
IT’S RAINY AND COLD back in lotus land so enjoy the good weather while you can .
all is well with myself and my family ,
Bob is the same, v& oj coming out of his pores !
take care .
yours sincerley John Phillips.