Tuscany Part 1

We are back from our wonderful adventures in Tuscany! This was the first time we went into a trip with a large number of specific expectations (about the food, the wine, the scenery) and as the trip approached we got worried that it might not live up to those. We didn't need to worry. Everything was magical, particularly the food, wine, and scenery. So gorgeous.

We visited eight towns in all, following roughly this route. The driving was mostly not terrifying, since I had prepped myself for Italy's more aggressive driving style. I also grew to really like traffic circles, and not just because our car had some issues stalling when in idle.

Given that we went all over, keeping this post in roughly chronological order seemed the sensible thing to do.

Florence is where the trip began and ended, and was the largest city we visited. This is the heart of the early Renaissance, and reminders of that are everywhere. We arrived in early afternoon and as always we had a long walk planned for the day, including the first (and I believe longest of the trip) stair climb.

The centerpiece of the walk was the Duomo and it's surrounds. The baptistery, which is directly across the piazza from the entrance, had great mosaics including this glass tile ceiling. We were not at all surprised that it was done by an artist from Venice, since it was very reminiscent of St. Marks. After the baptistery, we checked out the Duomo museum, which had a lot of the original sculpture and whatnot from the facade. It's not often that someone makes a relief of people's backs, so we had to snap a picture. The facade has changed a lot over time, with various works being traded in and out as tastes have changed and the weather has taken its toll.

It's true, we never met a set of stairs we didn't like. This is the view down the apse of the floor of the Dumomo itself. There is a lot of neat mosaic tile work in the floor, which we are total suckers for.

Further up the stairs we emerged atop the dome to a gorgeous view over Florence lit golden by the setting sun. Magnificent.

Back down the stairs, we walked the rest of the way to the Arno and grabbed an artsy nighttime shot from the Ponte Vecchio (old bridge.) We grabbed dinner back near the hotel (a great braised beef dish for me and chicken in balsamic reduced to syrup for Mary) and then went to bed exhausted. The plan worked, because we woke the next day refreshed and ready for our trip to Siena.

Driving in Italy proved to be a bit more of an adventure than we expected. I had been warned about the very aggressive drivers and mentally prepped for them, but nobody told me about their philosophy of how to get around. In the states, you take Street A for a mile, turn on Street B, etc. In Italy, you follow signs to town A, twisting and turning as they prescribe. If you are in a city, then you follow signs towards the soccer stadium or the old town, and woe unto anyone who doesn't know these landmarks.

With some twisting and turning and wandering, we did manage to find a place and verify (in broken Italian, over a delicious gelatto) that we could legally leave the car there overnight. We hoofed it with our stuff to the hotel (having bought a detailed map from the newsstand) and to our delight found it to be in a gorgeous old building with a lovely garden overlooking the Tuscan countryside. Beautiful. The hotel also had all sorts of fun little touches, like these lions holding up the 'ropes' that serve as hand railings for the stairs. Fun!

Man, that guy is about to get messed up!

One of the problems of having an eye for the absurd is that we tend to get fun pictures like this, but to completely miss some of the classic ones. This is the only one we took of the fountain atop the Piazza del Campo (literally, the plaza of square) in Siena. D'oh! We did get to see a lot of details from this fountain in the archeological and civic history museum, which was under the museum of the Santa Maria della Scala. This was pretty much three museums in one, and all were neat (though none allowed pictures, a theme that was to prove to persist.) The fountain was made out of a very porous and easily eroded local stone. While convenient, that ended up not doing much for the longevity of it, so the current one is a replica. The pre-restored bits are still in the museum, and it was very cool see see the befores and afters.

This shot of the Duomo in Siena gives a sense of style that most of the big churches went for at the time. Understated! The horizontal stripes on the campanile (bell tower) actually get thinner as they get higher, to give the impression of greater height. Oh those tricky Renaissance architects.

The view out of our hotel window in the morning in Siena, with the mist clinging to the valleys. So amazing. This was the same view the garden afforded us, and we took advantage of that as much as possible in the evenings.

The morning of our first day trip took us to Pienza, which is a little nothing of a town but very cute. When one of its native sons was made pope, he came back and re-cute-i-fied his home town, giving the whole thing a Renaissance makeover. Given that it's all of three blocks by two blocks, it was easier to do than it sounds. We had our first victory on the language front here, buying some Pecorino cheese (the local specialty) from a shop keeper who spoke almost no English at all. The cheese was great with a nice tang and savoriness.

From Pienza we headed to Montepulciano. This is a true hill town, with pretty much the entire thing raked at a pretty severe incline. One does various tricks to deal with that, like having stairs that appear to disappear into the hillside.

Like Venice, Montepulciano had a lot of roads that defied that description. At least here the absurd streets were labeled "Vicolo" rather than the laughable "Via" (little street, versus street.) I am a sucker for a good vicolo and could totally imagine my front door opening on one of these little charmers.

Throughout the trip I kept pointing out to Mary all the great places we could buy and restore. This place, right outside of town though, officially ran away with my heart. Look at it! So adorable! Montepulciano is known for it's wine (Vin Nobil de Montepulciano) so we could totally start our own vineyard! Instead of buying the ruin and making our own wine, we settled for tasting and purchasing a few of the local wines. Full bodied and robust, they were right up our alley.

The Duomo in Montepulciano was fascinating to me. At the time of construction, it was taken to the point where it was structurally sound and could be used for worship, and then left that way. Under all the beautiful facades we saw or would see laid rough brickwork like this. As it turns out, facade-less churches are pretty common in smaller towns. Tarting the church up is always the last and longest step in the construction process, and fortunes often turned by the time this step was reached.

Our return from Montepulciano to Siena resulted in one of our most frustrating adventures ever: Being lost in Siena. Most of the cities we visited had a road that circled the old town, making it fairly easy to fumble your way to where you wanted to be. Not so Siena. We spent 60 - 90 minutes trying to get to our hotel when we returned from our day trip, and it was maddening. We knew right where we were on our map, and right where we wanted to be, but we just could not get from one to the other. Insane. We eventually made it back by following signs to Florence and then redoing our steps from our first arrival in Siena, though that makes it sound much more directed and direct than it was.

The Duomo and Duomo museum in Siena had some pretty cool stuff, including a tower climb that we couldn't resist (that's the Piazza del Campo and the civic tower we failed to climb due to weather above.) It also had very neat inlaid floors including this one, symbolically showing Siena and all its neighbors. Almost the entire floor was covered in symbolic and biblical scenes in this inlaid style, and it was neat and totally unique compared to the mosaic work we've seen elsewhere. Very cool.

The Duomo also has a very intricately carved altar (which would prove to be a theme) including pillars standing on lions standing over their prey. These represent Christianity kicking paganism's butt, and were found all around Tuscany. Those Renaissance sculptors sure disliked paganism.

Off the Duomo in Siena was one of the neatest rooms we saw - The Picolomini Library. This room was covered in frescos, none of which had been restored. These bright colors and detail work? Original and hundreds of years old.

When we returned the car after the trip, we realized that we had complete failed to take a picture of the device that had been such a source of adventure. As a backup, here's a shot of the parking lot we found the first day in Siena. The lot is just outside the Fortezza (fortress) which has since been converted into a park. We strolled the ramparts, had some great wine at a wine bar built into the walls, and got some lovely shots of the city.

We were quite taken with Siena. Of all the places we visited, it was probably our favorite. It had a nice old world feeling, but still felt like a place people lived. That view from the hotel couldn't hurt it either.

As we headed out from town, I grabbed some pictures of the ways the Seinese deal with living on three hillsides: They attach blocks of wood to the downhill legs of their chairs and tables.