Yes, Tuscany really does look like that. We were there for a week in May, driving around from famous city to famous village, from Etruscan to Gothic to Renaissance, from vineyard to olive grove, and what we saw was what you see in the movies.
Our itinerary:
16 May - Kathy travels by train to meet Richard in Pisa, explore Pisa: leaning tower, baptistery, cathedral
17 May - pick up rental car outskirts of Pisa, drive to Siena
18 May - tour Siena: the cathedral, the baptistery, crypts, oratorio, cathedral museum
19 May - drive to Saturnia, check out natural sulfur springs, overnight in Saturnia Tuscany Hotel - with wellness facilities!
20 May - reluctantly leave Saturnia, drive on to small villages on the sites of Etruscan settlements, view Etruscan tomb city carved out of the soft volcanic rock. Drive to Massa Marittima
21 May - drive to San Gimignano
22 May - explore San G., soak up the ambiance
23 May - drive back to Pisa to catch our train back to Germany
There is so much to tell about cathedrals, churches, baptisteries and bell towers; picturesque towns, including public squares and hotels and places we stayed; and, of course, food!
Food!
It's said it's hard to get bad food in Italy. We found this to be true. An Italian menu is divided into Antipasti, which includes bruschetta and crostini, carpaccio and other small dishes; Primi Piatti - pasta with sauce; Secondi Piatti - the meat or cheese dishes; and Contorni - the vegetable side dishes, which often include grilled or baked vegetables and potato dishes. Some meals stand out in our memories both for the setting and the quality of the food.
The second picture above was taken from the restaurant where we ate on our last night in San Gimignano. La Vecchia Mura (the old wall) was perched at the top of a slope on the edge of town; one of the old town walls formed the boundary of the outside eating area. Richard ordered a boar dish, for the last time this trip, along with grilled vegetables and Kathy had pork cutlets in a saffron sauce with grilled artichokes and sage. It had finished raining for the day and the outside seats were pleasant with the layers we had on. We got there around 7, though the restaurant opened at 6, and we got there just in time without a reservation, because so many other people who came after us without reservations wound up waiting or being turned away.
Osteria del Carcere, San Gimignano, the second to last night: The list of dishes outside the door with their regional names, on a long rectangle surrounded by tile motifs with no English whatsoever, drew Kathy in. A bit of the exotic... We had a choice of sitting downstairs (4 tables total) or upstairs, and we chose downstairs, because that's where the kitchen was as well as a long counter (or bar) with all the different wines behind it. On the bar, in refrigerated cases, were some of that night's dishes. The woman who greeted us, a well-filled-out middle-aged woman with wiry black and grey hair was one of those gently authoritative types who seem to know what you want (or should want) before you do. She offered us English menus, which was helpful, but aside from that, the place didn't scream "we're here for the tourists". We tried a sampler of terrines for the Appetizer: Rinascimento con prugne (spinach with prunes), lamb, Chianti beef, and Cinghiale (wild boar, a recurring theme this trip). First terrines we ever had - same principle as a paté, but with bigger chunks. Wonderful! Turns out, the bar was mainly used for plating the food in the cases (our terrine slices) before it was brought to the table. The wines were a San Gimignano white Vernaccia, an oft-ordered favorite of the trip, and "Il Templare", a mix of the Vernaccia grape (70%) with Trebbiano (20%) and another one whose name escapes me. Il Templare was light and crisp without unpleasant acidity and easy to drink. Our main dishes were Faraona alle Castagne for Kathy and Tonno di Toscana for Richard. Faraona alle Castagne was Guinea fowl with chestnuts, accompanied by a chestnut puree. It came as a thick slice of stuffed, boneless bird, surrounded by the skin with a strip of fat under the skin. It did not taste like chicken. It was hearty, but at the same time sweet, due to the chestnuts that it was stuffed with and the pureed chestnut that accompanied it. Richard wanted to have the same dish, but the owner talked him into the "Tonno Toscana" (Tuscan tuna) which consisted of very tender, white pulled pork surrounded by white boiled beans, in a Sauce made with the crushed beans. He found it very rewarding. His after-dinner caffe "mokka" was poured from a stovetop espresso maker and came with delicate biscotti. We liked the meal and the atmosphere so much, we asked if we could make a reservation for the following night. "No," she said, right away. "We're closed. We need one day." A disappointment, but we understood.
Our Hotel Cisterna in San Gimignano: While exploring the old fortress in San Gimignano with great views of the countryside from its old bastions, we came upon the Vernaccia wine museum. Admission was free, and we heard the sounds of a presentation playing inside. So we read a little bit about our new favorite white wine and stepped into the room with the video. It was a collection of clips from every movie that included scenes from the charming little town. One of them had a number of British actresses: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Joan Plowright, hurrying among the walls of San G. We resolved to find that movie. Turns out it's "Tea with Mussolini" (1999), by Franco Zeffirelli, a semi-autobiographical story of the English and American women who helped raise him and who were living in Florence as WWII broke out. They were brought to San G. for internment because they refused to leave Italy. On youtube, you can see a clip of how, through somebody's influence (money) they were allowed to stay in a nice hotel in town, which happens to be the "Albergo Cisterna". Sure enough, there is footage of the well (cisterna) in the square and the ladies entering the hotel, with the name above the ground floor as it is today. The well also features in the end scenes when the allied troops march in. We plan to buy the movie as a souvenir of our trip to Italy. (www.hotelcisterna.it)
We showed up at the hotel in the late afternoon, and luckily the restaurant was operating. Hoping for something simple, yet hearty, Kathy ordered the "egg with truffle", expecting an omelet with some sort of truffle-like seasoning. What came was literally what it said on the menu: one fried egg sprinkled with shaved truffle! It was delicious, but not filling. She was able to order a second appetizer of beef carpaccio to keep us going until dinner.
The two pictures below were taken in San G. Yep, those are the Disney dwarfs perched on that wall.
First night in Siena: dinner at Il Gallo Nero (the black rooster): This medieval-themed restaurant was recommended at our hotel by a coupon for a small discount. For the cheese course, we tried the local pecorino cheese in four stages of ripeness, from creamy and mild to hard and tangy on the tongue. The walls of this restaurant were decorated with reproductions of Tarot card characters that were reputedly inlaid into the floor of the Siena cathedral. The waiter said that he also found it odd that such pagan themes were depicted in a cathedral. We could not find them in the cathedral at all. Further research (on Wikipedia) suggests that they represent a bunch of engravings known as the Mantegna Tarocchi and were used for educational purposes, but not for telling the future.
Below is a picture of the marble inlaid figure of the wheel of fortune, which we did see in the Cathedral (The picture was taken from the top of the wheel, where the king is. That's why the perspective is strange):
Pleasant people
The Italians were in general pleasant. No one snapped at us unpleasantly (as I recall happening sometimes in German-speaking countries, not to mention France). They could be firm, though, when they were tired of dealing with the same tourist question. Before the ticket office for the Siena cathedral officially opened, Kathy noticed that the doors to the office had been opened. So she went by the doors and looked in, in case they were ready to sell the tickets, "We open at ten o'clock," came the immediate call in Italian from behind the counter. (They probably go through this every day.) We joked to ourselves, "and not until we're good and ready at exactly around 10 after!" because nothing in Italy is exactly on time. But there was no time pressure for us; we were on vacation.
The owner of the hotel in Saturnia was cruising the dining room when we were enjoying our dinner there. He came over and, on request, regaled us at length with the story of how he had the hotel designed and built just a few years ago by one of Italy's most famous architects. (www.saturniatuscanyhotel.com)
A necessary evil: driving
Driving in Italy was what you'd expect, although it wasn't as bad as the worst stories Kathy had read. We never had to reverse down a steep mountain road to make way for oncoming traffic, and no one ever came round a tight curve in our lane. A lot of the roads we were on led up and down the hills through the country side, so they were taken at low gear and involved a lot of hair pin curves. On the flat areas, Italian drivers would pass on the solid line (i.e., a double yellow line) whenever they could. Once, in the hills, a deer bounded across the road in front of us in broad daylight.
Parking was also a hassle, and sometimes a costly one, especially for the walled towns. There were parking lots surrounding the towns and shuttle busses to bring you into town, but we didn't find the right parking lot, because the navigator system gave us directions to drive through the center of town, which wasn't allowed without a permit, and ended up in the parking lot farthest from our hotel in Siena. At the hotel, the woman at the counter tried to sketch how we should have been able to drive to the cheaper lot near the hotel, but part of the drawing was off the map, and it wasn't obvious how to accomplish this safely or easily. So we reasoned that the parking garage we were in (we thought) only charged for parking from 8am to 8pm and that it wouldn't cost that much to leave the car there. Wrong, of course! When Richard finally paid for parking, it was 60 € for the approximately 48 hours the car was there. Turns out the 8am to 8pm was for the surface lot only.
Driving into Massa Marittima and finding a parking lot was not easy, either. Kathy had to get out and ask around to find a local who spoke English and was nice enough to leave his bar and show us where we were on the town map, which was located on a sign at the other end of town from where we needed to be. Getting to the lot in this case was not so torturous.
For the next town (San Gimignano) we learned to program the navi to find a particular parking lot. Of course, it still expected us to drive through town to get to it, and when we got close it told us we were already there and stopped giving directions ("when possible, make a U-turn"). The paper map had a schematic that did not help at all. After a lot of driving around in circles and wrong turns, somehow Richard worked it out by coming across the sign for our lot accidentally. Nerve-wracking!
Letting it all hang out
As you might have known, the Italians are not known for their reserve when it comes to emotions. Or laundry, either, it turns out. Kathy is continually amused at how the Italians are not shy about displaying their laundry. The Germans, having somewhat different weather than in Italy, are often restricted to hanging their laundry in the furnace room to dry. The Italians, on the other hand, know that even if it rains, the sun will come out again soon. Below is a picture of fluffy pink puppy pajamas hanging outside the second floor of a house on a corner. Kathy couldn't resist!
