Tuscany

Today we spent hanging out in Tuscany. This is a famously scenic area of Italy and it really lived up to expectations.

Our first stop was Siena which is a large-ish town on top of a hill. It is famous for a horse race that happens twice a year around the main square of the town - the Palio. This is a race of seven horses because there are seven districts, the jockeys ride bare back and there is great excitement when it is on.

During WW2 Siena had an arrangement with the Red Cross where it was designated a hospital town and so it was not bombed. The war did so much damage to Italy’s heritage it really is tragic.

There is much animosity between Siena and Florence dating back hundreds of years when Florence gave Siena to the Spanish to settle some debt. Siena still celebrates victory over Florence in a battle that happened centuries ago. Now days there are still differences but they seem to get on OK most of the time.

The Cathedral is dedicated to St Mary of the Assumption and is, of course, spectacular. Striped marble, ornate ceilings, a separate baptistery, and beautiful artwork. It isn’t as big as Florence Cathedral and they did try to expand it but found the ground was unsuitable as the columns were going out of alignment so they stopped.

There is another large church dedicated to St Domenic and it houses some relics of the patron saint of Italy, St Catherine. By relics I mean her skull, a finger bone, and some bones from her shoulder. The rest of her is in Rome.

After some lunch and daily dose of gelato we hopped back on the bus and headed to our next stop the small hilltop town of San Gimignano. This town is very well preserved and looks untouched from the Middle Ages - though there were a lot of tourists walking around. The old fort at the very top of the hill provides postcard views of the surrounding countryside. The town’s other claim to fame is a gelato shop that has won the best gelato in Italy award multiple times so we had to sample that and yes it was pretty good!

Our final stop was a vineyard where the lovely lady gave us a talk about how to cook Tuscan style. It was really interesting, everything was pretty much what we have at home except for the garlic, it was massive! She cooked a ragu and talked about how to cook pasta properly. We then had ragu with thick spaghetti for dinner washed down with loads of wine.

The bus trip back to Florence was memorable. Listening to Pavarotti and other singers singing opera while rolling through the Tuscan countryside was pretty special.

Today marks half way through our holiday. It is really good and we are both loving every minute.

Tomorrow we have the day to ourselves in Florence so we plan to look around and see what interesting museums we can view.Lue lisää