Final Days

Nathan and I had the goal of restocking our cantina (wine cellar) with wine and oil while in Tuscany. Since we'd noticed a number of "Vendita Diretta" (direct sales) signs on the Radda to Castelnuovo Berardenga route, we took a day to retrace the steps, with stops including Poggiobrandani (a winery that has been owned by the Brandani family for eight CENTURIES - that is not a typo!) and the Barone Ricasoli winery (owned by the Ricasoli family for nine centuries - yowsa!). Baron Ricasoli actually came up with the original formula for chianti classico wine in the 1800s. Barone Ricasoli is the world's oldest, running winery still in original family hands, so what a treat to visit. Our winery day was a lot of time in the car, more than we'd expected, but we definitely added to our stock. No olive oil purchased, but our final stop was at a winery with the best balsamic vinegar I've ever tasted. At the time, I coughed up my taste at mention of the 40euro per bottle price tag, but now, I have to admit to regretting that we took a pass. I have dreams about that balsamic vinegar.

Castello di Meleto - a winery we visited with a swanky tasting room

A visit to Monteriggioni made the lists of both Aunt Lisa and me, so after our wine tasting extravaganza, we headed over to this walled town to take a gander at their towers still standing. I was looking forward to comparing this town of 14 towers to San Gimignano, with it's 17. Dante speaks of Monteriggioni (in Inferno), and, for those more up to date with modern culture, I've recently learned that Monteriggioni is a town featured in a video game called Assassin's Creed. I do not know anything more about this video game, mainly because the last video game I played was on an Atari - the first model. Monteriggioni is an easy town to visit, with parking outside the walls, a nifty money-making set up wherein visitors pay too much to walk on a pathway that parallels the top of the walls to take some nice, pictures of the countryside, and a couple of cafes staffed with waiters tired of tourist season and ready for us all to go home. Still, there are several shops with more interesting wares than the usual tourist fare, and I got to sit and watch an older couple who live in town sit on their front stoop, the woman knitting and the man hailing his friends as they walked by. Monteriggioni was a quicker visit than expected, so we headed on to San Gimignano, where everyone in our group could make the comparison.

For me, San Gimignano wins, hands down. Monteriggioni is quaint, charming, and probably deathly quiet by 7:00 pm. San Gimignano is a town for the tourists nowadays. Everything seems to be geared toward the almighty tourist euro, but that doesn't detract from the power of wandering through the hilly town, tall towers coming into view with every curve. And the views (free) from the fortress wall at the edge of town are divine!

Nathan in thought

Our final day, we realized that we still hadn't spent any reasonable time in Siena - the closest, real city to our hamlet! We headed in that direction, first stopping at the Parco Sculture del Chianti. This place had been on my list all week, and little did we know, it was only a five minute drive from our rental apartment if we took the dirt road short cut. All wheel drive tires are awesome. The sculpture park was the brainchild of an art-loving couple who purchased their country home and proceeded to create an outdoor art park featuring the works of artists from all over the world. Some of it is neat, some weird, and some I just plain didn't "get," but I love their vision. Finishing the outdoor park, we headed across the street to the "gallery," which turned out to be the couple's home. Their home is an art lover's haven, with gorgeous and/or interesting work at every turn, all in a home filled with light pouring in from windows overlooking the countryside. I fell in love with a particular painting, which may become our "Italy" art piece...even though the artist is from South America.

Gorgeous Baptistry in Siena

Our final, Tuscan adventure took us into Siena, where Nathan's aunt and uncle explored the Duomo, and Nathan and I got gelato while walking around, enjoying Siena's atmosphere. Heading back to the Duomo to meet them, I realized that I'd never been into the Baptistry. Our timing was perfect since we saw them walk into the entrance as we walked across the piazza, so I popped in as well. The Siena Duomo's baptistry is a riot of frescoed ceiling work, black and white striped columns in marble, a bronze font, and inlaid marble floors with several designs, including a Celtic knot pattern that took me straight back to Ireland. I marveled anew at the sheer volume of priceless treasures that fill Italy's towns, from the smallest of villages to the largest of cities. We ended our day and our Tuscan trip with a final walk through Siena's Il Campo - one of the best ways to end a week in this beautiful, magical region that calls so loudly to authors, artists, movie-makers, historians, and travelers.

Tales of Tuscany

Staying outside of Siena put us smack in the middle of gorgeous Tuscany, meaning the whole region was open to us. While I do want to visit some of the more out of the way towns, we decided that for this trip, we should see some of the biggies first. This led us to our first day's visit to Cortona, the town written about by Frances Mayes. Her fabulous books, best I can tell, put the town on the tour bus map (Under the Tuscan Sun, Bella Tuscany, and my personal favorite, Every Day in Tuscany). And lovely it is.

We approached from the flatlands and saw this beautiful city cutting into the hillside, complete with towers and the deep red rooftiles atop sandy colored buildings, colors so prolific in this region. I fell in love with Cortona, but that was probably due to the beautiful, blue skies that formed such a perfect backdrop for both the town views and the panoramic views of the countryside. Or it could have been because we visited on market day, always a fun treat, or that there was a medieval festival of sorts going on, filling the town with medieval costumed performers and making it so easy for us to cross the line of time between past and present. I even lucked into a shop with a clerk who wanted to chat...in Italian! I love it when that happens! After a delicious lunch on the main drag in town and another quick spin through town and to the Duomo (church), we headed back to our hotel to drop off our dog and on to San Gimignano for a visit and dinner.

San Gimignano's Towered Skyline

San Gimignano is a real favorite of mine. It's the only Tuscan town to retain so many of it's medieval towers, 14 still standing of it's original 60+. This makes for a fantastic skyline. Rick Steves writes that San Gimignano is given over wholly to tourism, and I suppose I found that to be true. But just walking those cobbled streets beneath the towers and climbing up to the fortress and the uneven, rock staircase to look out over those same towers...magical. With most of these little towns, activities are limited. They are small, filled with shops (some good, some typical tourist tchotch), have a church or two, maybe a civic museum, and several restaurants and cafes. We didn't visit every church and museum and shop, but we wandered, we enjoyed. Wild boar, cinghiale, is king here, and shops are filled with boar related items, advertised with boar heads hanging off their outer walls. Shops were for tourists, and I don't think we passed a single store dedicated to "real life," but still, San Gimignano is a wonderful visit.

Piazza of San Gimignano

Tuscan Afternoon

Yesterday, we took the train up to Lucca, a nice sized town in Tuscany with the crowning glory of completely intact, medieval walls which now form a pedestrian and bicycle promenade. We were supposed to be in Livorno, picking up the car we'd shipped from the U.S. Those of you who've read the blog from the beginning may remember that the government shipped one car, and we elected to ship our 2nd vehicle at the last minute. With some sort of weird mix-up, we did not ship it with the same company who holds the government contract like we thought we were doing, so the car did not get all the way to Naples. Instead, it was shipped to Livorno, about five hours north of Naples, and coincidentally, the place where Nathan's uncle was stationed several years ago while in the Army. When we told a few people about having to go to Livorno, they all recommended a visit to Lucca, about a half hour away, so we made our hotel reservation for a little B&B within Lucca's city walls. We weren't able to get the car out of customs yesterday, so instead, spent the late afternoon wandering around Lucca's streets, enjoyed a late lunch in a piazza that sits in the middle of what used to be the town's amphitheatre, rode bikes on the city walls, and had a great dinner at a local trattoria.

The port in Livorno closed today at 11:30, and we calculated it would take us an hour to get there given the 15 minute walk to the train station, two trains, then taxi to the customs agency office. Thankfully, we got ready a little early and decided to head out rather than have breakfast at our B&B. Due to our late trains, the trip ended up taking two hours. But we made it, got to the port, and while our customs agent was inside getting the documentation stamped, we stared at our car in a nearby parking lot...and realized one of the tires was completely flat. While we were staring in consternation, wondering how we're going to get that car back to Naples today (not optional to wait due to the movers!), a security guard walked by to ask what we were doing, and Nathan, mistaking him for a port agent, started into the whole story. The very nice security guard offered up the use of the air compressor he keeps in his trunk (??? why???), spent 20 minutes with us while pumping up the tire, then gave our customs agent directions to a nearby repair shop who would do a fix immediately and for a fair price.

The sense of relief we felt when we were finally on the road, in our own car, was so great. We concocted this great plan to have lunch in Florence and dinner in Rome since both were on our route home. We re-routed the GPS for Florence, but then decided that instead of battling Florence's traffic and busyness, we'd detour off the main route and lunch in San Gimignano, one of Tuscany's best hill towns. San Gimignano has 13 of it's original 70+ towers still standing, the most of any city in Tuscany. Most cities tore down their towers for the sake of development, or, the towers crumbled with lack of upkeep. For lunch, we picked a trattoria on a side street that didn't seem too touristy and had one of the best meals we've had in Italy. Absolutely phenomenal. Nathan had a beef carpaccio antipasti he loved, and for our primi plates, we had tagliatelle with tartufo (truffle) and ravioli stuffed with gorgonzola and walnuts. Plus a chocolate cake made with almond flour for dessert - yum, yum, yum. After that, we hit a calorie coma and were so tired that we skipped walking around San Gimignano for more exploring. In addition, we nixed the dinner in Rome plan after remembering all the packing up of the hotel room still left to do. Unfortunately, it meant nixing the entire blog I had written in my head and entitled, "Lunch in Florence, Dinner in Rome." Another time, perhaps.