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Published: September 29th 2008
After leaving Venice, we caught a train through to Florence where we based ourselves for the next three days to explore Florence itself and the surrounding Tuscan region. And anyone who knows us knows we were pretty excited about the opportunity to experience the Tuscan cuisine and wines the region is reknowned for.
SIENA After a good nights sleep we ventured out for our first day in the region. We started this with a day trip to Siena. Siena itself is about an hour and a half south of Florence by train, and provides a great chance to take in the countryside as you wizz through the region.
I imagine Siena to now be like what Florence used to be like back in the day. It was this cute little medieval town in the middle of the Tuscan country side. It was so authentic that it almost felt fake! It amost felt like we were on a movie set or something. I really don't think that the photos do it justice in all honesty!
Again, we spent most of the time just wandering around the little streets and alley ways and checking out the main square, Piazza Del
Campo. Now that was a cool square! It was pretty impressive walking into it, but once we walked right down to the entrance of the town hall, Palazzo Pubblico, and looked back at it, I realised how massive it really was! It was huge!
We walked around behind Piazza Del Campo and popped out at the back of the town which opened up into Piazza Del Mercato, and then dropped off down a big hill revealing the tuscan countryside in all its glory. All very cute indeed. It was about this time that we were getting hot and hungry and decided it might be a good time to try out some of this famous Tusan food and wine. And in true Hinds style - we didn't do things by halves! I'm sure you'll see that by the number of photos we took of our lunch too, ha ha!
So just a little summary of our tasty meal, for starters we had a traditional bruschetta & a white bean and anchovy salad. Yumo! It's amazing how the most simple, fresh ingredients can be so good! Then for mains we shared a beef ragu and a seafood risotto, again so
nice. We had all of this with a tasty little bottle of chianti wine that rounded the meal off nicely. And as you may imagine, after all this spread for lunch - we couldn't really fit in dessert! Besides... we had to save ourselves for more gelati after some more exploring!
So after our massive feast at lunch, we spent the afternoon wandering around the streets, seeing a few sights, mainly the large gothic church (Duomo) that was pretty impressive! We took lots of photos of the town and as always, they tell the story better than me!
After our afternoon gelati (told you!) we rushed off to get the train back to Florence (as after this one the next one wasn't for 2hrs). After a few high fives for making it just in time, we were unpleasantly surprised to discover (about ten minutes into our trip) that the train in front of us had broken down and couldn't move. So our hour and a half trip back to Florence became about 3 hours and for the most part we were bored out of our brains! After a big lunch and a few wines, sitting on a train
Looking across at Palazzo Pubblico
This was a really beautiful town squarewasn't what we really had in mind - more like relaxing in our hotel room! Anyway, there's always a silver lining I guess and ours was the fact that by the time our train got moving again we were treated to a lovely sunset over the Tuscan hills. Definitely not something you see every day and something I'm glad we didn't miss.
Florence The folowing day we took to the streets of Florence for what we knew would be a big day of walking and sightseeing.
We had been prewarned that if we wanted to see any of the famous drawcards of Florence, such as the Statue of David, you had to be on the ball pretty quick. So taking this info into account we strode out fairly promptly in the morning to line up to get in and see Dave. Now we have been to a few museums and art galleries before in our time and while there is normally the one or two big draw cards, the rest of the offer is pretty good. But I have to say, while the Statue of David was very impressive (and a lot bigger than I thought it would
From the right hand side
Standing at the town hall and looking back at the Piazza, the three shots make up the whole square be at about 17 foot) the rest of the small Galleria dell' Accademia was rather avergae. And for €10 entry fee, it did make us feel a bit ripped off - especially when there is a replica of the statue of Dave in its orginally resting place in Piazza della Signoria that you can view for free. But hey, we can now tick that off the things to see in our life.
Following our visit to Dave, we back tracked and went to take a wander through Mercato Centrale, the large local food markets. And wow what a place, it was huge and everything was so amazing. Adam was like a kid in a candy store. From here we strategically worked our way through the city taking in various other Piazza's and Basilica's as we worked our way to the main square, Piazza San Giovanni and Piazza del Duomo and the famous Duomo with the Dome that towers above everything else. The various sites associated with the Duome were crowded with people, all the more accentuated by the fact that the piazza's around here was very small. Florence really have built up against eveyrthing else, and you really notice
how crammed in everything is - it does make it hard to take things in and get a true feel for the size and grandeur of it all.
From here we worked our way towards the rather impressive Piazza della Signoria with the area displaying many amazing statues and fountains. This was probably one of our favourite spots in Florence. By now the temperature was truly heating up and we were getting a bit tired, but we wanted to press on, so we worked our way towards the Basilica di Santa Croce, via a place called Gelateria Vivoli, which we had read offered some of the best gelati in the world. Now that was a pretty big call, so of course we had to check it out. Unfortunately when we found it, it was shut given the Italian summer holidays when most Italians go away. Rather dissappointing for us however. So we marched on and worked our way back along the river towards the Ponte Vecchio bridge with all its shops along it. We had hoped to go and see the artwork within the Galleria degli Uffizi, but the lines were way too long.
Crossing the river we
decided to go see the Palazzo Pitti palace, and of more interest to us the grounds behind it, Gardino di Boboli. Our hope was to wander through the gardens and find a nice shady tree to lie under for the afternoon. When we arrived we found that you had to pay a fairly hefty fee to enter the gardens and/or the palace, so we decide the gardens were our focus. The only let down for these amazing gardens were that it had been a really hot summer and the grass was very brown and dry. But in saying that the grounds were beautiful and very big - it was a mission in itself to get around them all in the heat. Of particular interest to us was around L'Isolotto (Little Island) and its amazing moated garden. Also the views across Florence itself from the Kaffeehaus pavilion were fantastic. And of course we had to check out Michelangelo's La Grotto Grande and its crazy looking walls.
But by now we had reached our limit for the day - we had walked all day in very warm weather, and decided it was time to head back to our hotel for a
A local attraction - bird handlers
I was so intrigued by this massive bird with huge claws. Ange wouldn't go within 5m of it. quiet night in. Of course we picked up some Italian meats and cheeses along with some bottles of Chianti wine just for good measure and to keep the sustanance up.
Greve in Chianti On our last full day planned for the region, we headed an hour east out of Florence by bus to the little town of Greve in Chianti. One of our aims of the trip was to visit some of the vineyards of the region - now considering a car is really needed to make the journey from vineyard to vineyard, we took another tact that friends had told us about from when they were here a few months before us, and that was to go to Greve which has a wine museum/tasting centre featuring over 1200 varieties of wine from the region and offered 140 different wines to taste. So without the opportunity and time to travel the whole region visiting vineyards we went to the motherload that brought all the vineyards to us.
But before we were to enjoy the wines, we enjoyed the very picturesque bus trip through the rolling hills out to Greve in Chinati. When we arrived, we were expecting a
more rustic little town, but found it to be fairly modern in terms of the buildings and layout. Before things got too warm, we wandered upwards towards a lookout which took in the whole area, which was worth the very easy stroll. Following this we headed towards the main square, Piazza Matteotti. The first thing that hit us was the most amazing bakery aroma, and we followed our nose to a quant little bakery. And yes we had finally found it - cannolis - those delicious treats we had had so much trouble finding everywhere - and they were good.
Now Greve doesn't have too much to offer in the way of sites, but it did have a very famous butcher, Macelleria Falorni, reknowned throughout Tuscany, particularly for its traditional cinta senese pork. And what a place this was. The place was a carnivores heaven. It has to be seen to believe really.
Given it was about lunchtime as well, very close to the butchers is a little restaurant called Mangiando Mangiando, which is known for preparing these reknowned meat products into traditional Tuscan dishes. So of course we had to have a very lazy lunch trying the
local delicacies and Chianti wine. Everything was truly delicous, and in particular the cinta senes pork in pasta was out of this world.
Following lunch and to round out the day of over indulgence, we then headed to the wine centre, Le Cantine di Greve in Chianti, to taste the regions various wines. It was a good way to spend the afternoon as it was a really nice place that was fully air-conditioned (which helped as it was a very hot day). Basically you put credit onto a card and are given glasses, you then wander around the wines and when you want to try one you insert your card and press the button to dispense wine. Most tastings for the standard wines were €0.60 for a quarter of a glass. But the Super Tuscans that are about €600 a bottle will set you back about €4 a taste. All in all a great way to try the wines - reds, whites, sparkling, and dessert wines.
Of course from here there was not much left to do but stumble back to the bus and enjoy the leasurily trip back to Florence. All in all a very enjoyable day.
There are heaps of pictures for you to help visualise most things, so do enjoy.
Next stop, we head west to the coast to take on the Cinque Terre hike. Look out for our next instalment.
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