Under the Tuscan Sun, and the Tuscan Moon, and the Tuscan Stars, and the odd Tuscan Rainstorm

I’ve been writing this over the past few days. We’re in Siena for the day, and I am grabbing a few stolen moments to upload some pics and post all of these blog entries. Internet access in Italy has been pretty awful, at least in the Tuscan hills where we’ve been hanging. Life just so totally sucks when all you can do is see one beautiful place after another, eat fabulous food and generally lead a completely sybaritic life. You can all feel very, very sorry for us now.

IMG_0705.jpgSaturday, September 15
We’ve been in Tuscany for a few days now and I have to say it’s as beautiful as Under a Tuscan Sun portrays it. Yesterday we spent the day in Florence, which is a crazy, crowded, overwhelming and astoundingly amazing place that hits you in both good and bad ways all at once. We went to the Uffizi and Academia (by appointment which is the ONLY way to go), and spent a few hours just walking around and soaking up the ambiance. Things I’ve learned: Rick Steves’ guidebooks rock, but the Uffizi has another set of restrooms in the basement that are newer and cleaner than the ones he mentions near the café. Oh, and parking in Florence is every bit as bad as you may (or may not) have heard. And if you take the night train from Paris into Florence, it drops you off at the Campo di Marti train station, which is nowhere near the Santa Maria Novella train station (where the Hertz rental car office was) in the center of town. But a cab ride from Campo di Marti to Santa Maria Novella costs only 15 Euros, give or take, so it’s not too big a deal. And let me here give due praise to one of the stars of this trip – my iPhone, He Who Must Not Be Named, The little guy has been a real brick, transitioning seamlessly between France’s and Italy’s cell services, and giving us Internet access as needed even where no wireless connections exist. The only times the connection has flaked is when we have been deep, deep in the countryside of Tuscany. It worked nonstop in France, and has come in really handy calling taxis and making reservations for events.

We’re staying at the Villa Sant Uberto, a small hotel about halfway between Castellina and Radda in Chianti. It’s located deep in the hills, up windy roads that took all our map reading skills and all of the GPS’s navigational advice to find. The scariest bit was getting the rental car out of Florence alive – as far as we can tell all Italians drive like maniacs, and the craziest of them drive scooters and they appeared to be aiming directly for us. Once we found the hotel, it was great. The location is breathtaking, located as it is overlooking vistas that look like they were ripped out of a travel magazine. We went to the town of Panzano today and got to participate in their Vino al Vino wine festival, where for 10 Euros each we got to taste as many Tuscan wines as we could handle. And we met some swell folks in Tom and Patricia, New Yorkers who have spent the last twenty years living in, of all places, Scotland. Patricia helped us learn a thing or two about Tuscan wines, and introduced us to a small but excellent winery called Renzo Marinai. Their 2003 Chianti Classico is my new favorite. We wrapped the day up with an unfortunate choice of activities: a Schubert concert at a church in Castellina. I think they made it about five minutes into the first piece before our head were all lolling back. In our defense, this is the guy who wrote lullabies. Luckily we have a designated driver in Skip, who prefers sampling diesel engines to local Chiantis.

Sunday, September 16
Today we drove around the countryside a bit. Actually we drove around almost more than I could handle – a couple of hours on the narrow, twisting Tuscan roads left me feeling a tad queasy. We have seen tons of bicyclists riding on these two lane (sometimes single lane) roads, sharing space with cars and motorcycles that drive FAST. I for one won’t be signing up for a bike ride in Tuscany any time soon. I’d be dead in a day! We stopped first in Gaiole, another charming town (yes, in fact, they are all charming) that was having yet another wine festival. We were there a bit early, so got to see the setup. We opted not to do any tasting, having burned out after attending the Vino al Vino in Panzano. After Gaiole we drove to the Castello di Brolio, which is touted as being the birthplace of Chianti wine. We walked around the castle grounds and gardens, and had lunch at the castle’s cafe, a charming (I really need to find another adjective to describe this area) outdoor and indoor restaurant. While touring the grounds, we met a very nice English couple and ended up having lunch with them. Sue and Keith were from Sussex, and had been to Tuscany before (we’ve run into a lot of repeat visitors and I can see why). We spent lunch griping about how hard metric to English measurement conversions are. We for a while thought the diesel Opel we rented was getting something like 62 miles a gallon. Turns out we had screwed the conversion from liters to gallons all up. The car actually was getting a much less impressive 28 miles to the gallon. After Brolio we toured a bit more of the countryside heading toward Siena (I guess that’s south of where we were the previous two days). We came back to the villa just in time to watch a rainstorm sweep through, which we watched while sitting on the veranda sipping – you guessed it! – a nice Chianti. Dinner was in Castellina, at the charming Antica Trattoria La Torre restaurant where I had cannelloni (I am doing my best to not repeat any pastas on this trip – it’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it) and a yummy minestrone soup.

Tomorrow is our last day in Tuscany before heading back to Florence and we’re going to visit Siena, where I hope to find an Internet cafe and upload some Italy pics and finally get these entries posted. Tuscany has proven to be weak in the high speed Internet department – wireless is almost non-existent from what I can tell. But did I mention how charming it is?

Photos here. More from Paris, where we will be on Wednesday.