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On the way up from Rome to Florence/Firenze I stopped for a couple of days in the Tuscan Hills. Due to poor planning I did not have any small change on me when I got off the train to take the bus, so I had to walk the six kilometers uphill in a thunderstorm to get to Cortona. No change for a fifty euro bill. Anyway, it was an invigorating walk, though I was pretty soaked when I got there, even with my umbrella. Cortona is a nice little village with beautiful scenery. Not a whole lot to do there, but nice to look around...I had planned on doing some walks, but felt I had satisfied that urge in just arriving. It was a suprisingly packed little town, especially the restaurants for dinner. It was more difficult to get into a restaurant than in Rome or Paris. I met a nice American family in Cortona that invited me to Arezzo with them for the once a month flea market. That was the first time I've been in a car since I left home. Arezzo had an old and modern section, and the flea market was in the older section of
town. It was fun to rummage through the Italian antiques and vintage clothing. There was a fair amount of junk, but some pretty impressive stuff too. I had no intention of packing an antique chandelier into my backpack and stuff was pretty overpriced, so I was just looking... The morning I left Cortona I met this mother and daughter from Seattle who both knew Amma, so the mother and I talked about our trips to India and to Amma's ashram. Since she was travelling in Italy with her daughter it was the first year since 1989 she missed Amma's trip through Seattle.
I spent the next few days in Florence at a nice guesthouse Locanda Starlight. It's mostly a guesthouse, but they do have limited hostel style accomodations. Rosanna will remember your name and come into make your bed in the morning. Not you typical hostel. I highly recommend the place. My first day in Florence I went to the Boboli Gardens and surrounding area. It was more like a park with trails and trees than a 'garden' but was still nice. There were some nice views of the city from the top of the hill. Over the next
few days I made the rounds of the city seeing the sites...highlights included the David at the Accademia (so much more impressive than in photos), the Birth of Venus &Allegory of Spring (Boticelli) at the Ufizzi, and Duomo. I had a few culinary adventures with my friend Ruby from the hostel via San Francisco, a fellow pleasure loving taurus and food appreciator. The most amazing, I think she would agree was at the Teatro de Sale. She had read about it on the New York Times and had made us reservations for the tango dinner theater show. It's a private club that you have to join (only 5 euro for a year for foreigners) and then the dinner and show were 25 euro. But totally and completely worth it. Probably one of the best five meals of my life. I was expecting something like a pan of lasagna and maybe a salad, but instead...
It was four courses and each course had between five and ten completely amazing dishes. There were also wine kegs with unlimited red and white wine. The dining room had these six massive windows so you could see into the kitchen where they were cooking...with
a good view of this spicket where they had three types of meat roasting and the wood burning clay bread oven. The antipasti course was continually replenished so as fast as people would finish a platter of the most Amazing Marinated Tomatoes Ever a new platter would replace it...they had fresh ricotta, green salad, hot forcaccia, chickpeas, lentils, italian style hummus, grilled fish, marinated fava, marinated beets, stewed potatoes, squid soup in ink broth (i could only manage a sip of this), roasted fennel, and my memory is still forgetting a few things. Then the first course started...pasta with red sauce and cheese, different pasta with incredibly fresh pesto and riccotta, creamy risotto, more hot fresh bread, one that looked like a femur bone with joints. One of the greatest atmospheric qualities was the the chef that would announce each dish...something like an announcer for a boxing match ("and in this corner..." type announcement)...It was all in Italian and he would announce each one like three times and people would swarm around to get plate. First and second course sort of blurred together, but I remember there were steamed mussels in lemon sauce, roasted beef with carmelized onions, steamed clams,
tripe in a spicy sauce, roasted sausages, shortrib and pork loin all done on the spicket. The dessert course was fresh homemade cream gelato with a warm black cherries poached in red wine sauce. On the side there were these moist diamonds of chocolate, something between a torte and a brownie and not sweet and not bitter. Just absolutely perfect. Some of the food actually gave me chills it was so amazing...especially the cherries and chocolate. And Ruby and I kept looking at each other and breaking out in laughter because of the ecstatic looks from whatever we happened to be eating at the moment. After some Italian chaos where they arranged the chairs for the theater(packed tightly like sardines without order, with no semblance of rows or personal space) we settled into a food coma. The live tango orchestra were excellent, as were the professional dancers. I think they had about four costume changes. Really beautiful, though I was in some altered state of conciousness from all the food. After the show we walked out and noticed some activity in a nearby plaza, it happened to be a free concert in the plaza with loads of university students and
a fun ska band. So all in all that was probably one of the better nights of the whole trip.
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Tuscany Villas
Being a large group of people (19 people!) we did not think we could find something in the countryside in Tuscany to fit us all. On Villas in Tuscany we were able to find Villa Chianti, a sixteenth century farmhouse completely restored to a be a wonderful private villa with pool. The pool was gorgeous! Immersed in an olive grove and surrounded by lush plants and blossoming flowers, it commanded views of the countryside around Florence. The house was just unbelievable. Full of all comforts, it did not even need air conditioning as these ancient Tuscan villas have very thick walls and they function perfectly as a thermic insulation. The peace level, the privacy, and the food (we got a private chef for the week!) were simply gorgeous. Our daytrips to Florence, Siena and many other small towns in the area were a pleasure since we were so centrally located in Tuscany. One day we even went to Rome and were back in the late afternoon for a swim in the swimming pool of Villa Chianti. The owner, a French performer, gave us all comforts, such as cable Internet and TV, WI FI connection, fax machine, photocopier, and a wonderful international library. Even during the occasional rainy days it was a pleasure to be inside this homely Villa Chianti, which internal architecture reminds of an old castle, in bright summery colors. In addition we went for wine tasting in the chianti region, which left me with a much better understanding of this superb wine. Villa Chianti in Tuscany is a lovely experience to try!