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Friday 30/07/2010 121
Our last day in Tuscany and we headed to Siena. A smallish place, it is a walled medieval city centring on the Piazza del Campo which is the site of Siena's insane twice yearly horserace Il Palio. Siena is divided into 17 districts, and 10 are randomly chosen to complete. The jockies ride bareback and the only rule is that you are not allowed to pull on the reins of another riders horse. We quite happily wandered around the city, everywhere are the flags and scarves representing the different districts, and there are hundreds of winding, sloping cobbled streets. Past the Duomo and Baptistry (which we didn't go in because as beautiful as they were, similarities to the churches in Pisa and Florence and being a little churched out made it impossible to justify the expense and enjoy admiring more marble and gold leaf. Lunch was a chocolate brioche at a pasticceria recommended by Lonely Planet....delicious and the caffe was excellent.
After returning to the villa we once again went to dinner at the trattoria across from the villa. I accidentally ordered rabbit (stupid Italian Menu) and was quite enjoying it until reaching a piece with kidneys still attached. The multi-generational family that runs the place seemed to have been into the local grappa for a Friday night and service that would have everyone pissed off if it happened in your home town (ancient grampa walking past and having to ask many times for a coffee) are perfectly acceptable and all part of the experience of being in Tuscany.
Thursday 29/07/2010 122
Off to Pisa today...train to Florence and the out to Pisa waslong way around (2 + hours to get there) but it saved another trip with the psychotic sat nav. Pisa is famous for one thing, it's tower...and to be honest there really isn't anything else there, except a university.
The Leaning Tower, famous for Galileo dropping cannonballs off it and it's lean is actually the bell tower for Pisa's cathedral and began leaning even before it was finished. That's what happens when you build a marble building on sandy ground. When work began to stabilise and rectify the lean slightly, the engineer calculated that it should have already fallen over it was leaning so much. It was straightened up by about a half a degree and should be fine for about 300 years. FYI not the only tower to be leaning in Pisa, just the most famous.
After dodging the crowds 'holding' the building up for a photo we got our shots standing in front of it, much smaller than it looks in pictures it is expensive to actually enter and involves many steps! Instead we went into the cathedral and baptistery. The cathedral was much the same as all the churches built at the same time in Italy, but the baptistery had this cool echo-y thing happening that was demonstrated by a security guard.
On the train and back to Tuscany...
Wednesday 28/07/2010 123
A quiet day, with a trip to Montevarrchi with the intention of going to the supermarket and finding an internet cafe. The internet was easily located but the supermarket was closed for siesta, so we returned to the villa empty handed.
In the evening we went to a local, family owned and run vineyard and olive grove, Casanuova di Ama. All you could eat...Tuscan finger food i.e. bruschetta and olives and salami and all good things...and all you could drink of the local drop. The vineyard was just 12 acres and run by 4 people but they did produce the tightly controlled Chianti Classico wine of which only a limited number of bottles can be produced every year and every bottle has a serial number allowing you to track where, when and by who the bottle was produced. The vineyard had an excellent policy of passing out the order forms after everyone has had a skinful so much wine was bought and a challenge set for what we needed to drink before we left Italy.
Tuesday 27/07/2010 124
Today's grand plan was to take a drive to the Cinque Terra. A round trip of a about 300kms not far by Australian standards however the psychotic sat nav woman decided to take us a roundabout way and the autostrada appeared to have moved it took us about 4 hours to travel to La Spezia train station. From there we caught a train to Monterosso the furthest of the 5 villages (the other 4 being Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore) that are on the 12km stretch of coastline set in a national park. You can walk the entire length but after lunch in Monterosso, we took the easier option of catching a ferry to Manarola.
From the water you can see all the villages clinging to cliffs with brightly coloured buildings and mountainous scenery. It really is a stunning part of the world. From Manarola we walked the last kilometre or so along the Via dell' Amore (walk of love). All along the walk people had followed the Italian tradition of putting a padlock on a fence and then throwing the key into the water as a confirmation of love. Upon arriving back at Riomaggiore and training back to La Spezia, the GPS was given a stern talking to and managed to get us back to the villa within a couple of hours.
Monday 26/07/2010 125
Today, leaving Em and Kim to enjoy the peace and quiet of the villa, I headed to Firenze (Florence) with Mum and Dad. We caught the train to the centre of the city and discovered that even Macca's coffee is good in Italy.
Florence is the city that spawned the Renaissance and is famous for the 3 Ms (Michelangelo-the artist, Machiavelli and the Medici's -patrons of the arts), the author of Pinocchio was also from Florence. A beautiful city full of renaissance buildings and winding streets. We began our visit at the Duomo (church) which was an amazing building and contains the first 8 sided dome built since antiquity and is said to have sparked the Renaissance style of architecture. As a church, visitors are asked to act in a certain way (a dress code for instance that sees people covering up in very sexy paper ponchos) and to maintain a respectful silence. However, a lot of people talking quietly still makes a lot of noise, so every so often a security guard would speak over the loud speaker demanding silence 'SILENZIO' an action that seems strangely at odds with the idea of respectful silence.
At the Loggia della Signoria, we saw a copy of Michelangelo's David. Probably the most famous sculpture in the world, the original used to stand here but it was moved into the Galleria d'Academia because it was being damaged. We were unable to visit the original, as the galleries are all closed on a Monday, but this meant that crowds were down thankfully as it is the height of tourist season. Behind the sculpture is the Palazzo Vecchio, once the 'government house' of the Florentine Republic and it still acts as civic offices for the city, including the registry office for weddings.
To get across the River Arno we walked the Ponte Vecchio. This 2 story bridge is lined with jewellers, it used to be butchers but the Medici's, who used the top storey to cross the river, disliked the smell and demanded thebutchers be replaced with metalsmiths. It's not much to look out from the outside, on the bridge it all glittery and shiny.
Across the river we climbed a steep set of stairs to reach the Piazzale Michelangelo, which is a memorial to the artist. The only way to get Mum to the top was to promise ice cream and thankfully there was a gelato stand located at the top. The large sculptural memorial was originally going to have a statue of the artist but instead has a bronze copy of the David. This memorial is now located in a large car park. But the views over the city are panoramic and beautiful.
On the way back to Santa Maria Novella (the train station) we passed the San Croce church where Dante (the author) was baptised.
Back to the villa for a very un-Italian dinner of burgers and bangers...we all needed a little respite from pasta.
Saturday & Sunday 24-25/07/2010 127-126
After departing our apartment, on Saturday morning and catching the #1 Vaporetto (which travels all the way along the Grand Canal allowing a final view of stunning Venice, the Rialto Bridge, the casino that has been open since the 1600s and many beautiful galleries and hotels) we caught the train from Venice to the mainland at Mestre. Here we collected a hire car and drove to San Sano in Chianti. It is a little nerve wracking travelling on the wrong side of the road and the impatience of Italian drivers takes getting used to. Along with the seemingly Italian practice of parking your car wherever you want as long as you leave the hazard lights on.
Lunch on the Auto Strada, before we arrived in Tuscany. It is everything you expect, rolling hills covered in grapevines and olive trees, stone villas and old barns. Our accommodation was in one of these stone buildings, in a complex of similar properties. After settling in we went for a swim in to pool that was right next to a vineyard, despite it being substantially cooler that the sweltering heat that we had in Venice.
Sunday was a totally lazy day. A brief afternoon trip to Radda in Chianti for ice cream and dinner at the Trattoria across the road from our villa. Run by 3 generations of the same family, who spoke very little English, we successfully negotiated the Italian menu and despite Kim and Em leaving early, the meal was delicious and long and the wine was good...just what you expect in Tuscany.
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