San Gimignano

7/10 Leaving Florence to San Gimignano delle Belle Torri

Finally off at ~ 1300, we had a cup snack for lunch (dried fruit, nuts & corn) and drove through the rolling green grapevine covered hills of Tuscany, their roadsides dotted with small stone villages, and for the first time, appreciated the dreamy tones that people use to describe their love affair with this region. 

The gorgeous Manhattan like silhouette of San Gimignano, with its 14 towers (apparently there were once 72 when the Guelphs of Florence & the Ghibellines of Siena were duelling in the 1300s), sits atop one of these lush hills and no sooner had we pulled up into a rest stop, than we were on a free shuttle bus to explore.  Together with St Paul de Vence in France, this is easily the prettiest town we have seen all year.

the new camera

Despite being utterly jammed with people and fellow tourists, the charm of this old Etruscan village with it small streets, all with views, the exquisite cafes and artisanal shops & galleries had us decide in an instant to spend tomorrow here as well.

We saw THE most incredible contemporary art gallery imaginable (Galleria Gagliardi  www.galleriagagliardi.com ) with mesmerizing paintings and astonishing modern sculpture. Jen & Wil were utterly wowed by large metal & fibre-glass sculptures of old books whose pages of transparent glass were scattered with melted, bead-like jumbled black letters.  The kids were delighted by impossible one-piece marble sculptures of crazy tiny hilltop houses and Jeff stood for ages admiring an ink black & white canvas of a Bruce Lee inspired male fighting figure.  When we rob that bank, we’d like to fill our house with this stuff and several bronze & white marble children sculptures by Fontana. 

The range of beautiful & unusually individual leather bags here put the Florence markets and shops to shame - Jen finally bought one….and we all celebrated not having to go into anymore leather shops!

Tomorrow,  we hope the sun comes out to enhance our joy of photography.

8/10  d2 in San Gim

For morning exercise, we elected an easy bike ride, rolling up & down dale in exquisite poetic Tuscan countryside.  Whilst away for 1 hour 20 minutes it didn’t reflect our work load as we stopped around every bend to take photos.  An unbeatable combination of shapes decorated the photographic canvas.  Tall pencil pines, like patient old men stand roadside showing the wiggly way between the vineyards laid out in irregular polygons.  Waves of hills, one behind the other fading to the horizon, are gently separated by soft wispy low white clouds like tissue paper separating delicate sketches.  And adding interest to the curvy high points are butter-scotch coloured geometrically shaped clusters of stone homes & wine cellars, the most prominent being San Gimignano with it’s spectacular skyline.  At outset we were riding in clouds only seeing the road in front of us but the canvases were painted almost as we rode. 

We passed a big squashed fresh road-kill porcupine on the way home and stopped to pick 2 quills for the kids.  Kel is fascinated with parchment & quills having read Harry Potter recently.

Jen left the kids with Jeff to school whilst she zoomed ahead to complete the gift shopping (especially for Wil & Kel’s upcoming birthdays - Wil wanted to get Kel a pink leather bag & she suggested a smart leather brown belt for him). 

We re-united over a piece of local specialty, citrus panforte and then wandered more gorgeous streets with quality artisanal shops & galleries before climbed to the fortress walls of the Rocca where we lingered with incredible views over Tuscany and the terracotta roofed village spilling down the hill.

With a sunny sky and flautists, painters & singers lifting the ambience to heavenly levels, we strolled about, sat beneath olive trees and held hands whilst the kids played hide & seek in the groves and small stones staircases.  Jen cried again listening to the voice of an angel singing Tuscan lullabies and then bought the CD that she’s mixed with her husband (Giuditta Scorcelletti & Alessandro Bongi ). The Italian language was written to sing - in contrast to German.

We sussed out a Lonely Planet suggested trattoria deciding to only have dessert & coffee saving ourselves for our main meal in Ed.  Keen to introduce the kids to the local delicacy of Tiramisu, we did the trailer trash thing opting for a takeaway E3 tub tiramisu rather than sitting for a smaller E8 number in a cafe. If you take a coffee at the ‘bar‘ you also get unlimited apperitivi (unlimited nuts, biccies, dried corn and other savoury snacks.) So we filled up for less the half the price, piling our plates high and enjoying watching the locals pop in for beer and standing espressos.

Back past more delightful shops, we picked up some enormous frilly multi-coloured gourmet pasta shaped like a regional favourite - tripe -  and shuttle bused home for a cook up.  The kids did some writing and Wil read more about Girabaldi as dinner bubbled.

Sitting to eat a simple but hearty meal, the family presented a moist eyed Jen with an incredible surprise gift of an amazingly striking Murano glass pendant in thanks for all the Ed cooked  feasts this year.  Wil so innocently & enthusiastically declared she’ll be the talk of town on return just as she is the talk of the motorhome community in Europe!

All done, we watched the Siena episode on our Italian cities DVD and then belly laughed to an episode of Black Adder, prepared the kids for our late return tomorrow morning (Jeff’s planned a 30 km early ride through Tuscany) and jumped into bed.