A Quick Note

Jan 6, 1600 GMT

Just a quick note right now - this internet cafe I'm at it a fair bit expensive than our usual one in Radda. Plus, I am using their computer, not my iPhone, so haven't had a chance to compose things beforehand.

Where and I, you ask, that has this different setup? This is a little cafe in San Gimignano, a quintessential hilltop town about 20-30 miles west of where we are staying. It is technically outside the Chianti area, so their wine cannot be counted as "Chianti Classico". Instead, they call it a different kind of chianti, even if it uses the same san giovesse grape as Classico. They only do some of that, however, and instead produce a delightful white wine based on the Vernaccia grape, which is just wonderful. Seeing as how it has been pouring rain most of the day, and it is a Sunday, and it is an Italian holiday (happy Three Kings' Day, everyone), there isn't much open. The museum of wine, however, is open, so we spent some time sampling the local varieties. It was great. Now we are enjoying a quick cappuncino before hitting the road back for home.

More posts in the offing, stay tuned!

Other Highlights from Florence

Jan 5, 1030 GMT

After arriving and finding a place to park near the SW entrance to the city (Porta Romana), we headed into the middle of the city, over the River Arno via the laden-with-shops Ponto Vecvhio, and towarda the most famous museum of the Florence, the Uffizi. Being the place that it is, it had a substantial line to get in - one to two hours - so instead we pressed on to a museum further north. It is actually an old monastic church, San Marco, where one of the brothers was an inspired early-Rennaissance painter (1400s), Fra. Angelico. He adorned the inside of the monastery's cells with paintings taken from the life of Jesus, some 40 in all. There is also a larger work at the head of the main staircase, an Annunciation that has a staid Mary receiving word from a Gabriel with most-unflightworthy wings that looked as colorful and patterned as the marbled paper that Florence known for. Far from frivolous, he and his brothers viewed these paintings as a devotional work, although I have never seen so many studies of Jesus on the cross.

San Marco, being a part of the league of Florentine museums, was able to sell us tickets to the two other museums we wanted to hit up. The tickets had times attached to them, reservations, which was a first to me.

Our second stop was the Accademia, which I have already mentioned in a previous post. Essentially, you pay the €10 entry fee to see David - the rest of the collection is of importance only to the most thorough art history major. It may seem like a lot to spend doe a single statue, but it turly is a msterwork to see up close.

The museum also has a collection of incomplete Michelangelo sculptures - works in progress. It is remarkable to consider these half-finished works, pieces he started and abandoned, human shapes visible emerging from the rough-hewn marble.

We wandered to the southeast to a restaurant that Hilary and her folks enjoyed a good meal when they were here years ago. Alas, it is no longer there. So, we popped into, essentially, the next restaurant we found - a place called Baldovino. It turned out to be a good find, we had a pleasant meal of pizza, gnocci, and raviolli.

After lunch we had a little time to stop by a well-known, but physically tiny, chocolatier, before heading back to the Uffizi for our reserved 4 o'clock entry. It is a strange thing to me to have to send my bag through an x-ray machine and pass through a metal detector to get into a museum. It would be a strange thing to see at, say, the Smithsonian. Ah well.

The Uffizi has a tremendous collection of early Renaissance art, mostly Italian, including many pieces by the masters like Raphael and Michelangelo. There is a large room filled with Boticellis like the easily-recognized Venus on the half-shell (actually named The Birth of Venus). Hilary picked up a 1000-piece puzzle of it, which she started that same evening.

We capped off the Florentine experience with a double barrelled sugar rush. We hot ridiculously-thick hot chocolate at a place called Rivoire, followed by gellato near the Ponta Vecchio on our way put of town.

We got back to the house after eight, and didn't sit down to a dinner of white bean and porcini mushroom soup until 10:30. So all in all, a full day.

(after 2-3 days of blogging and internet use, my iphone's battery is running low, and I neglected to bring a cord with me on our outings today. So, perhaps no new posts for a day or two.)

Sent from my iPhone.

In Florence

Jan 4, 1330 GMT

Just a brief note now, and more later. One of the main attractions in Florence, or Firenze as it appears on the maps, is the Accademia museum, the main attraction of which is Michelangelo's David. Pictures are not allowed, but the iPhone was inconspicuous enough for this shot. That's Hilary at the base, in the black coat.

Greve and Volpaia

Jan 3, 2100 GMT

After doing our thing at the Internet café in Radda for about an hour, we strolled down to Bar Dante Alighieri, where we had stopped briefly the previous evening. We had a light lunch of spaghetti cut thicker than a pipe cleaner, with a wonderful chunky red sauce, and a thick traditional Tuscan soup with white beans, potatoes, some unidentified greens, and old bread all cooked down to a thick and well-seasoned mash.

Next we headed north from Radda to Greve in Chianti. It was a very twisty road between the two that wound among heavily cultivated rows and terraces of well-trained grape vines and olive trees. It's a lot hillier here than I'd expected - meaning that the hills are a lot steeper and higher that I'd pictured in my mind. The weather had hardly improved, meaning that it hovered just a bit above freeIng under heavy grey skies. It also happens to be winter, so the vines are bare, and all the trees are a dusky brown with retained dried leaves. But it is still quite a sight to see. If the weather improves, I'll be sure to post some better pictures.

Our stay in Greve was brief. We were there long enough to see the main square with attached romanesque church. One of the shopes that lines the main square is purportedly the most famous butcher in the region. Given that Hilary's a vegetarian, we didn't go in, but we could see that every inch of the walls and ceiling were hung with legs of prosciutto, crusted with salt and whatnot from their long aging. We also found a wine cellar, probably run the some association of vintners, that had bottles of many of the regional Chiantis and olive oils - probably upwards of 100 different labels and vintages. They would run from about €10 to over €100+. You could taste most everything there, oils and wines, by purchasing a sort of debit card and taking that to one of the circular tables around the room, where different bottles were hooked up to a dispenser. While an ingenious system in a way, it was alittle sketchy and impersonal, so we didn't try it out. We are hoping one of our other stops will have a more personalized tasting, with a much narrower selection, small enough to actually get your palette around it.

We drove out of Greve not long before sunset. The Tourist Info center had given a more detailed roadmap, and even highlighted the way to our next destination: a very small walled town only a 100-200 called Volpaia. We had tried to get to Greve by way of Volpaia from Radda, but our maps were not detailed enough to show us the tricky way to reach the right road. Now we were trying it backwards. The thin highlighted track actually traced a few kilometers where the map showed no road. Undaunted, though perhaps a little weirded out, we followed the directions up many narrow switchbacks and through a few tiny, one-road towns on the way, we left pavement behind as dusk fell around us. For a good 15 minutes, the only indication we were still on the right track was the fact that that there were many fresh car tracks through that day's snow. Eventually, we reached this tiny, 900-year old town that sits on the end of a ridge - part of Florence's southern vanguard in the fifteenth century. Now, diverse vinyards adorn the slopes below it. A small adventure getting there, and unfortunately too late in the day to even hey out of the car to look around, most places were definitely closed for the day. We'll try to catch it in daylight in a few days.

After a home-made dinner of spaghetti and red sauce (not as good as lunch's), we plotted out tomorrow's plan. Ordinarily, I wouldn't go through such an effort, but tomorrow is our designated day to hit up Florence, so we want to have our act together beforehand.

Sent from my iPhone.

Chains and we're off!

Jan 3, 1030 GMT

I have never used tire chains before, though I get the idea behind their application and use. Tires have gotten better over the years, roads are better, and I don't live in a place where I'd need them.

But, today, it was either figure out the chains, or be stuck inside all day. While being inside to read and drink hot stuff all day isn't a bad notion, we ought to make the most of our time here, even if it is a lot colder (and, at the moment, snowier) than we expected. There are vinyards to see, cappucino to drink, and olive oil to sample.

So, Mark and I drove down the driveway, to test the conditions for driving back up (and, by extension, the surrounding dirt roads). We barely got past 100 feet when the tires began to spin and our progress halted. On with the chains! It had been years since Mark had used them, and then only the kind you had to drive over to install (as he recalls, he may have used them at Dartmouth in the 60s, and remembers using them with Dickie, which was a positive swear-fest). These are a more contemporary type, which wrap around top and bottom. After a few minutes' futzing, we were able to sort it out. It made driving back up the driveway not too bad, almost no slip.

As I compose this, we are on our way into Radda, first to an Internet café, then on to other things.

Sent from my iPhone.

Snow in Tuscany

January 3, 0800 GMT

Yes, it is hard to believe, so I have included this picture. It is not a heavy snow, hardly worth noticing in Minnesota or New England, but it is enough to keep us pinned down this morning. You see, the place we are staying at is about halfway between Castellina and Radda, on a stretch of unmaintained, twisty dirt road. The driveway is an awfully steep and unpaved affair, traveled exclusively in first gear for its whole 1/4-mile length. The usual caretakers of this place were kind enough to leave us their set of tire chains so that we'd be able to get up the driveway in slick conditions, but so far we have decided to hold off and see if the sun would come out. As of about 10 this morning, all we have received is more wet snow.

Sent from my iPhone.

Tuscan Bread

Jan 2, 2000 GMT

Tuscan bread, as you can well imagine, is wonderful, particularly here in Tuscany. Apparently, the most traditional Tuscan bread is unsalted. You notice the difference. The reason for this quirk is not entirely known, but I have two theories. The first is that, because they eat the bread with prosciutto and other heavily-salted meats, they hardly notice its absence. My other theory is that, many many years ago the Tuscans got hit with some obscene salt tax, possibly levied by the Pisan merchants on the coast, and simply refused to use salt in their bread dough out of spite. The fact that this probably happened 1000 years ago is of no consequence, there's the principle involved.

Sent from my iPhone

We Have Arrived

January 2, 1700 GMT
After the joys of a transatlantic flight (7 hours), and crossing 7 time zones, we arrived this morning in Pisa. Holly and Mark were there to pick us up and bring us to the house they are watching over this month. We are about an hour south and east of Florence, where we will make at least one day trip.

We are nearest to several villages that constitute the heart of Chianti wine country. Their names are all variations of "[name] in Chianti", such as Radda in Chianti, where this picture was taken our first evening here. This is the Bar Dante Alighiri. Great cappucino! The café is run by an Italian fellow and his English wife, and is sometimes staffed by another English gentleman who also runs a wine shop in town. Being six in the evening, well before the typical dinner hour and well after the typical after-work crowd, we were the only ones in the place.

Naturally, since I am able to post this, I have gotten some wireless access. Quite reasonable, really: €2/hr. However, I wrote this in the evening of our first day, then posted later (the following mid-day). We'll be posting more as we go along.

Sent from my iPhone.