Tuscarny

Warning: This post could be very long.  But there will lots of pictures to keep your attention.  We had our share of adventures during the last three days, most of them enjoyable.

We arrived in Florence on a fast train Sunday morning.  Since we only had 6 hours to explore the city, we did some cramming to get a day's worth in.  Goal #1: Gelato.  My favorite gelateria (Gelateria De Neri) is in Firenze, and there's another one that's great (La Carraia).  We took care of La Carraia first and made it to the superior De Neri at the end of our day, their caffe gelato is unreal.  But onto less important things, we spent half of our brief stay at the Uffizi, the most famous art gallery in Italy.  I'd been a couple years ago but this time we had a tour and it was a totally different experience.  This photo of the bridges over the Arno is from the bend in the U that is the Uffizi.

The most ambitious part of our trip was the decision to rent a car.  We picked up our two-tone Audi in Florence and I got behind the wheel.  It was my first time driving outside North America, and it was pretty scary at first, but the small car fit the small roads.  Fast-forward 45 minutes.  We make it to our small Tuscan base of Greve in Chianti, and our hotel is on the main piazza.  But the main piazza is blocked off.  So we drive around through a narrow, hilly residential area, see the piazza from the back but again it's blocked off.  The only place to park was in the driveway of about 5-10 apartments.  So I can just park and run down to the hotel to ask where to go, right? 

No.  One car parked in front of me decides it's time to pull out.  Another car comes up behind me and wants to get in.  People come out of their apartments.  I try to pull as close as I can to a garage door to let people pass but I can't get the car to start again.  My Mom and I freak out.  After panic subsides somewhat, I realize I put the car in reverse before I turned it on so I put it in park and eventually pull closer.  I run down to the hotel, no one is at the desk.  I run around til I hear voices in the back and I call for someone.  A young guy comes our and I ask him where to park.  He asks, "You drive the Audi?"  Word already reached him.  He tells us to move the barrier and park in the piazza and check in, and then we re-park in a lot a couple minutes away.  Welcome to Greve.  Welcome to driving in Italy.

But we grew to really like Greve.  I should probably explain where this is, since all you may know is the name of Chianti wine, that's all we knew until a couple months ago.  So Tuscany is a region in Italy, like an American state.  And Il Chianti is a wine region in Tuscany, similar to Napa in California.  There are vineyards everywhere.  It's in between Florence and Siena, the two most famous cities in Tuscany.  And Greve is in the heart of Chianti.  Chianti Classico is the most famous variety of Chianti, it means that the grapes are 80+% sangiovese grapes.  The other varieties have different percentages.

There's a beautiful piazza (pictured, where our hotel is) that's always lively, even on Ferragosto, a national holiday yesterday.  The shops surrounding the piazza are mostly wine shops, crafts, and there's a butcher shop a few centuries old that has hams hanging everywhere.

Yesterday, after a confusing period of rain subsided, we hiked about a half hour west of town, up a hill checkered with olive groves and vineyards, which we were surprised to discover are often one and the same.  I guess they grow well together.  It felt a long way from the chaos of Palermo, the size of Rome, and the intentional beauty of Florence.

We hiked to a very small (300-400 people) medieval village atop the hill called Montefioralle.  After one 5-minute loop around town we'd seen it all, but it was definitely worth it.  It was a cloudy afternoon, which was not ideal for pictures, but the temperatures were about 15° cooler than expected, so no complaints.

For the rest of the afternoon, we struggled to find an open vineyard since it was a holiday, but I found one with an English tour at 3 pm, about 30 minutes away.  We set off in our Audi, this time I was Navigator.  The drive was unbelievably beautiful.  It got to 2:50 pm and we were on track, just went through the last town before the vineyard.  But the next turn didn't come.  At about 3 I tried to call the vineyard (I have an Italian phone) but had no service.  A few minutes later I see a sign saying we're heading toward Castellina.  Castellina is exactly the wrong direction.  Somehow, and neither my Mom or I could figure out how, after passing through the last town we had done a 180° and were going the wrong way.  There are lots of turns, most of them very blind, and I guess we hadn't realized that we missed a turn somewhere and made a lot of turns in one direction and ended up back on the same road, going the other way.  Baffling.

Exhausted and nauseous, we took the road to Castellina, which turned out to be a beautiful medieval town, and one of the main destinations in Chianti.  After our stomachs stabilized we had some amazing gelato and found an incredible view off the west edge of the town.

The way back was, mercifully, only one road.  I finally enjoyed driving and made a few stops along the way when it was just way too pretty to keep driving.  Example...

For dinner we went to the first of two places I made a reservation at for the trip.  Up a hill not too far from Greve, we had a terrace view of the sunset.  The home made gnocchi was fantastic, and some of the other dishes were as well. 

But I'm gonna stall for a sec (to allow more room for pictures from dinner) to talk about Chianti/Tuscan food.  First of all, the bread.  I remember seeing Tuscan Pane (bread) at Trader Joe's, and I think I bought it once, and I think it was good.  If that was the case, TJ's Tuscane Pane is horribly inaccurate.  Tuscan bread is TERRIBLE.  Reason: They don't put salt in it.  I don't know why, but it is terrible.  There is plenty of great olive oil to be had here, but at the end of tasting it you have to endure the taste of the bread.  It's really unfortunate.  I think it's the same way throughout Northern Italy.

Aside from that, the food is really good.  Mushrooms are big here.  I've had something mushroom-y or truffle-y with just about every meal.  And I haven't had a disappointing gelato in this region. 

And today.  Today was a good day.  We drove back up into the hills for a winery tour at Vignamaggio, which claims fame for two reasons aside from their wine.

1. Much Ado About Nothing was filmed there.  Now on my Netflix Queue.
2. Mona Lisa was born there.  She lived in the villa until she left to marry someone who commissioned Da Vinci to paint her for their wedding.  Or at least so the story goes.

It was a beautiful place with almost 360° views and we had a great tour guide.  There was a nice Belgian family touring with us, and they had a little girl who was wearing a pretty dress that she used to store her impressive pebble collection from the villa's garden.  She would wrap up the pouch and drag her dress around the garden.  It was adorable. 

We tasted a few of their wines and olive oils.  The rosemary-infused olive oil was my favorite, and the super spicy olive oil was fun.

After lunch back in Greve we headed to the largest enoteca (wine shop) in Chianti for some more tasting.  The Chianti Classico, the most famous type of Chianti wine, that we'd had at dinner and at the winery were decent, but we didn't love either variety.  This place, like many in town, had wine cards, where you get a card worth say, 10 euro, and there are bottles hooked up to machines everywhere and you can but a taste worth between .60 and 6.00 depending on the value of the whole bottle.  It's a cool way to try a bunch of wines.

We tried to like Chianti wine.  We tried to like any Tuscan wine.  We found a couple that didn't taste bad.  But most of them tasted bad.  Finally we ended up at the olive oil tasting station where we found options that didn't cause us to make a face, laugh out of bewilderment, and spit it out.

Finally, dinner tonight.  Inspired by a family when me on our Rome tour who made pasta, we signed up for a cooking lesson at a nearby villa.  The chef was Giudita (Judith), a Hungarian-Italian woman who was the perfect mix of humility, control, and humor.  We were joined by four Aussie girls traveling the world.  We made tiramisu, pici (typical Sienese pasta, thicker than spaghetti, you can see us rolling them) with pesto and with tomato sauce, crostini with chicken liver, lightly breaded tomatoes, and chicken with peppers.  And by "we made," I mean we did a lot of the prep and she did a lot of the actual cooking.  But we watched and she explained (and my Mom took notes).

It was a cool experience, and I definitely learned a few things.  We aproned up, and the first thing she asked us to do was crack an egg for the tiramisu, and put the white in one bowl and the yolk in another.  She did this very easily.  She asked me to do it next.  I cracked the egg, some of it fell on the floor.  I poured the white into one and did my best to filter out the yolk, but it slipped in.  So I scooped most of it out and into the other bowl.  I asked if it was ok and she looked very concerned.  It turns out that if you get any yolk into the whites, it doesn't turn into cream when you blend it, and the tiramisu doesn't have the right consistency.  Oops.  But she still liked me because I was the only one who spoke any Italian, and because I was the only guy so my name was easiest to remember.

But dinner turned out well, and we enjoyed our meal outside, overlooking the hills of Chianti.  The Aussies were a fun, witty bunch, and had some great travel stories from their last few weeks in Europe.  The crostini with chicken liver and pici with pesto were the best. 

And to Chianti Classico's credit, the one we had was actually pretty good wine.  Giudita said it had to breathe for an hour or two before drinking, so she uncorked it as we started to cook, and by dinner time it tasted much, much better than at the tasting earlier.

Ok, this was a very long post.  I had a feeling it would be when I picked out only essential pictures from the last three days and there were 15.  Tomorrow we had to Cinque Terre, so the pictures should stay pretty for at least a little while longer. 

To those of you who asked for these to go directly to you, thanks!  It makes it more fun to write when I know people want to read.  I hope the "subscription" service worked!