Tuscany – Riveted

More Florence!

Laura Domela — Tue, 27 May 2014 19:14:56 +0000

This morning we slept in and it was glorious. Exploring Tuscany can take it outta you and it was a nice recharge this morning. We made breakfast and did some work, then popped down the street to the sandal shop, and then across the river to explore a little and grab a cappuccino.

This afternoon at 2pm we met up with most of the wedding group to do a walking tour of Florence. We all met in front of the palazzo where the bride and groom are staying, just one block over on Via Maggio, the Palazzo Ricasoli.

Palazzo Ridolfi was designed by Italian architect and sculptor Baccio d'Agnolo.

Across the street on Via Maggio, there's a lovely example of one of my favorite styles of architectural decoration: Sgraffito. This building is the Palazzo di Bianca Cappello, and has some good Medici dirt history associated with it.

We wandered around listening to our fantastic tour guide, Cindy, as she skillfully gave an art and architecture of Florence tour to a group largely consisting of artists, art historians, and architects. Impressive!

The Palazzo Strozzi courtyard:

Ironwork on the outside, done by Florentine blacksmith Niccolo Grosso. Grosso was referred to as "Il Caparra" (which means "The Deposit" — due to his always asking for an advance before starting any actual work).

Beautiful iron work on this building, inside and out!

We wandered over toward the Duomo and were able to pop into the Cathedral to see the interior from the ground floor (which was cool, because when we visited before we only saw the cathedral from up inside the dome).

Dome from below:

Today we learned about how this dome was engineered (by Filippo Brunelleschi), and it's remarkable, really. More info here if you're into that stuff.

We made a stop at the Palazzo Vecchio — the town hall of Florence and the location for Thursday's wedding. The Palazzo Vecchio is a giant fortress/palace that overlooks the Palazzo della Signoria, has a copy of Michelangelo's David out front (replacing the original which is now inside the Gallerie dell'Accademia but stood here for several hundred years), and is one of Tuscany's most impressive public spaces.

The bronze equestrian statue of Cosimo I by Giambologna (1594):

The ceilings/columns/walls inside the entrance:

And…fake David's butt:

A few more modified street signs:

We learned from our fabulous guide that these are the work of a French artist named Clet. Apparently this was not okay at first and the city kept removing the signs, but people complained and now they let them be. They're wonderful and whimsical, and everyone can still read "Do Not Enter" and "Go This Way" … so why not let them be?

We ended the tour at Gilli Cafe on the Piazza Repubblica (one of the oldest cafes in Florence…opened in 1733) for drink and a snack with most of the group…such fun! We left a bit early to meet our new friends Andrea and Beppe (of the 500 Touring Club) over in the Oltrarno for an apertif near Santo Spirito…we love these guys! Great people, running a great company…seriously…their tour in vintage Fiats is highly recommended. I wish we could have done it twice while here! (Mostly just so we could have more time hanging out with them! Hi guys!!)

On our way back toward the apartment as we were passing Santo Spirito, there was a side door opening into a cool courtyard area, and I decided we should go in and check it out. Kevin followed and it was quickly apparent we were crashing some church thing. No one seemed to care, and I took a couple of sneaky photos:

Also, cool shiny red new Vespa by textured really old door:

We headed over to where we thought we'd have dinner tonight: Il Santo Bevitore (where I had octopus a week ago and it was SO GOOD).

Awwww, full up. Second choice: Trattoria Casalinga, back where we started at Santo Spirito: awwwww, full up. (We didn't even ask, the place was tiny and there were about a dozen people standing, waiting.) Third choice: Olio e Convivium back near our apartment. Awwww, three strikes! (It was 8:15pm). Plan D: Osteria Il Cantinone…down a bunch of stairs into a caveish place (and yay, room for us!)…good house wine, stuffed zucchini flowers, ravioli with pesto, pappa al pomodoro, and a grilled chicken dish..all solid and plenty good.

Today was a really nice, chill day in Florence. (Oh yeah, and it was also kinda cool, and windy, and it rained this morning…totally different than every other sunny/warm day we've had since we've been there…the first day I've worn long sleeves!)

Tomorrow we'll pack our bikes into their suitcases and work on figuring out how to bring all the stuff we bought home. Tomorrow evening is the cocktail party over at the wedding party palazzo, which should be a blast, and Thursday at 12:30 the wedding day festivities begin at Palazzo Vecchio and will continue into the evening at the Antica Torre di Via Tornabuoni for reception and dinner with fantastic views of Florence. Friday morning early, we fly home…booooo. I really love Italy and could easily stay WAY longer. Guess we'll need to come back!

Touring the Chianti Countryside

Laura Domela — Sun, 25 May 2014 08:44:35 +0000

So, there are a couple types of tours: (1) the tour in a giant brightly colored and tour-branded bus full of people, and (2) the small group tour in a nondescript van with a maximum of only 8 people. While in theory this smaller group tour might sound much more inviting than the giant bus tour, everything about the personality of the small tour depends on those other 6 people. The giant bus full of people does not have a personality (other than the "tourist" personality). You are anonymous and can float around chatting with different people who might match up with you nicely…and move on if they start talking about how much they miss a real pizza with freeze-dried parmesan on top.

Yesterday we did a small group tour of the Chianti area of Tuscany with 4 other people and our guide Giancarlo. Giancarlo was wonderful: soft-spoken, very informative, patient. Also, Giancarlo loves American tourists. He said that American tourists are his favorite, because they enjoy things the most and seem to have the most fun. Most other tourists seem unhappy or depressed and it's not as enjoyable to take them on a tour. (Clearly, phrases that make us bristle…like "All these Italian names are starting to sound the same!" don't seem to bother him.)

We began the tour from the Piazza Repubblica and headed out in our silver VW van with air conditioning into the Tuscan countryside. We stopped first in Impruneta, at a small family run terracotta studio called Forcace Masini.

We got to watch a work in progress:

Pots like this can only be added to in increments of about 12cm of terracotta at a time (structural reasons) and as you can see, the pots don't spin on a wheel/base, the artist walks around the pot and works in circles.

Until fired, the pots are a dark gray color.

The famous "terra di Impruneta" is a clay mixture of sand, calcium carbonate and iron oxide. It feels like a super fine powder in your fingers:

Outside the kiln:

Workspace:

Finished terracotta in the sun:

We left Fornace Masini and headed toward Montefioralle, a small village in Greve in Chianti said to be the birthplace of Amerigo Vespucci. We wandered around a bit and took a few photos while Giancarlo talked to a local man who has lived in Montefioralle all his life. There are between 40-80 people who live in Montefioralle (Giancarlo said 40, the internet says 79…either way, it's not that many).

Next stop: the town of Greve in Chianti. It used to be just Greve until 1972 when the words "in Chianti" were added to many small towns in the Chianti region as a marketing campaign to increase tourism and awareness of the Chianti region (which totally worked, apparently).

Giancarlo dropped us off just outside the town center so we could explore the Saturday market for an hour or so. There were people in booths selling produce, fish, meat, clothing, shoes, tools, kitchen gadgets, and much more. It was fun to wander through here with the locals as they socialized with their once-a-week neighbors.

We stopped and had an espresso, then went into the Macelleria Folorni, a deli/butcher shop that Giancarlo said was one of his favorites.

Down in the cheese cave:

This is a beautiful shop and we ended up taking some goodies back to the apartment (prosciutto, salami, cinghale, bresaola, some pecorino, and more fresh eggs).

Next up was our first vineyard/winery: Castello Monterinaldi in Radda in Chianti.

We got to tour the cellar and learn some things we didn't know (which is fabulous after all the cellar tours we've been on). This is Vin Santo ("holy wine", a traditional Tuscan dessert wine usually made from Trebbiolo and Malvasia grapes), aging in these chestnut barrels since the 1980s:

Chianti Classico:

There's all sorts of stuff we never knew about Chianti.

The grounds of Castello Monterinaldi are gorgeous:

Can you believe this building (below) used to be a chicken coop? Like, you know, for chickens??

After our tour of the grounds we went inside and got to taste four five wines plus the vin santo, plus a little grappa (!!!), along with a light lunch of traditional Italian cold cuts, cheese, sundried tomatoes, bread, honey, estate-produced extra virgin olive oil, and this incredible pear/mustard compote that I must find jars of to take home before we leave. Spicy and sweet, it's perfect drizzled on Parmigiano-Reggiano (or probably on anything).

The owner (Daniele Ciampi) was informative and generous and everyone had a lovely time here. They have a nice saying: Chi ha furia, faccia piano, which basically translates to "Those in a hurry, slow down" (or as Google translate says: Those with fury, face up).

Our next stop was the town of Castellina in Chianti.

We wandered the narrow streets, stopped for gelato, and then headed to our second vineyard: Casa Emma.

Paolo was our guide and gave us a tour of the production and aging areas, and taught us a few more things we didn't know.

After the tour, we went upstairs onto the patio to taste some of Casa Emma's wines. This is Paolo:

And this was our view:

We tasted some Chianti Classico, a single vineyard Chianti Classico, a Chianti Classico Riserva (our favorite), and two Merlots. Very nice wines! We brought home a bottle of the Riserva. We now have 3 bottles to drink in 5 days. I think we can handle that!

Yes, I know I never really told you anything about the other four people in our tour. Let's just say we had a little lesson of our own about patience and tolerance, and overall we enjoyed the tour very much.

Lucca, Pisa, and Volterra

Laura Domela — Sat, 24 May 2014 19:08:16 +0000

Yesterday, we rented another Fiat 500 to do some more exploring at our own pace (which seems to be "fast"). We put our bikes in the back of the Cinquecento and headed for Lucca this time. Lucca was founded by the Etruscans and became a Roman colony in 180 BC. One of the things Lucca is known for is having fully intact Renaissance-era city walls. From Rick Steves Florence & Tuscany guide:

"With the advent of cannons, thin medieval walls were suddenly vulnerable. A new design — the same one that stands today — was state-of-the-art when it was built (1560-1650). Much of the old medieval wall (look for the old stones) was incorporated into the Renaissance wall (with uniform bricks). The new wall was squat: a 100-f00t-wide mound of dirt faced with bricks, engineered to absorb a cannonball pummeling. The townspeople cleared a wide no man's land around the town, exposing any attackers from a distance. Eleven heart-shaped bastions (now inviting picnic areas) were designed to minimize exposure to cannonballs and to maximize defense capabilities. The ramparts were armed with 130 cannons."

Lucca, from the wall:

The wall from outside the city:

A couple of bastions in the distance:

This path leads up to the top-of-the-wall path, and the tunnel goes under/through the wall, to the outside city:

Here's a map of our Lucca city wall laps (about 9 miles all in all):

We saw these two guys several times (since we did a few laps). One guy was walking (at a fastish pace) and the other guy was on a bike (at a slowish pace, smoking a cigarette) and they stayed right together, talking the entire time:

We rode down into town, grabbed an an espresso and a panini at a sidewalk cafe, and then headed on to our next destination: Pisa.

We arrived in Pisa and could see the tower in the distance as we approached (which felt a little like when I was a kid and we went to Disneyland…the moment the Matterhorn was visible in the distant skyline). We parked in a free parking lot, deployed the bikes again, and off we went. Pisa is cool! The tower is fabulous in person, as is the rest of the Piazza del Duomo:

I can't tell you how many people we saw taking "The Photo" — the one where someone is trying to hold up the arch. Hilarious. I'm guessing we saw hundreds of those photos being made. Hundreds. At least.

It's so much fun to be able to fit two bikes in the back of a Fiat 500. So. Much Fun. We feel pretty badass after each one of these little Fiat/Bike Friday excursions.

We decided next to visit the town of Volterra.

More than 2,000 years ago, Volterra was one of the most important Etruscan cities. Eventually (like many other cities) it was absorbed into the Roman Empire, and for centuries was an independent city-state. Volterra fought bitterly against the Florentines (there was a lot of fighting around these parts!) but like many Tuscan towns, it lost in the end and was given a fortress atop the city to "protect" its citizens. (More from Rick Steves' Florence & Tuscany)

We entered the city near the Medici Fortress (which is now, ironically, a maximum security prison). This prison houses only about 100 special prisoners. Word is that authorities prefer to keep organized crime figures locked up far away from their family ties in Sicily. There are big "no photos" signs all around but I didn't see them until after I took this shot. The guard walking the roofline perimeter didn't seem to notice.

We stopped in at a cute spot called La Vena di Vino to have a glass of wine (Ombra, syrah, from Volterra, very good and we brought a bottle home).

This place is super fun…owned by two brothers (Lucio and Bruno), and decorated in bras, it's a sweet little enoteca with a great selection of wines by the glass. More info here on Trip Advisor.

After La Vena di Vino, we explored town bit. Random little churches:

No gelato, dogs, or bare shoulders allowed:

City walls:

Oh yeah, walking along the top of the wall…

You get this view of this insane Roman theater built in 40B.C.:

The stage wall was standard Roman design: three levels from which actors would appear. The first level was for mortals, the second level for heroes, and the third for gods. Parts of the first and second levels still stand (and maybe at the top there is a tiny part of the floor for the gods):

Next, we walked over to the Palazzo dei Priori, Volterra's City Hall, built around 1209. To the right of the front door there's a horizontal "cane" cut into the wall. For a thousand years this square hosted a market and this "cane" was used as the local yardstick:

"Etruscan" bronze for sale:

Typical street in Volterra:

Last stop in Volterra was the Porta all'Arco, or the Etruscan Arch. Built in the 4th century B.C. of massive volcanic tuff stones, locals claim this is the only surviving round arch of the Etruscan age, and most experts believe this is where the Romans got the idea for using a keystone in their arches. (!!!!)

The three protruding bits in the arch were heads that date back to the first century B.C. but they've suffered serious erosion (being outside for 2,000 years might do that) and are no longer candidates for facial recognition.

Imagine being the guy who lives here in No. 62, right next to this 2,000 year old arch!!

After Volterra we conquered some more of the Chianti countryside in our Fiat 500 before returning it and riding our bikes back to the apartment. We went (again) to our new favorite local neighborhood trattoria for dinner. Friday night is hoppin' in the Oltrarno!

More info about Volterra here (in Italian), but translatable (have fun with that!)