The day dawned fine and sunny and we set off to visit 2 classic Tuscan towns, and also a couple of lesser known destinations.
The classics were San Gimignano and Siena. Both are historic walled towns that have been largely preserved as they were many hundreds of years ago.
San Gimignano is known for its many towers, and is jokingly called the Manhattan of Tuscany.
I climbed the bell tower, Torre Grossa, and was rewarded with terrific views over the town and Tuscan countryside. The country is rolling and green, with olive groves, vineyards, villas, cypresses - just as we have seen on various TV programmes about Tuscany! In fact we passed a few villas that were in the process of being renovated - possibly by mad Englishmen, but we couldn't tell.
Siena is famous for the Paglio horse race held each year in the central piazza, which is something of a scallop shape. The race is apparently very hard in the horses, who often come to grief at the very tight corners.
Siena is also well known for its grand cathedral, and for its roast pork sandwiches called porchetta. We couldn't get into the cathedral due to queues, but successfully acquired and munched a porchetta.
Our lesser known stops were at a winery, Vescine, which makes chianti style wine. Chianti is the name of the region, and the wine is made primarily from sangiovese grapes, sometimes with small amounts of other types blended in. We tasted a couple of the winery's chiantis, as well as their Sauvignon Blanc (a surprise that they had this!) The Sav was very different to NZ ones.
Lastly we stopped at the village of Greve (just on spec as it was such a nice day) and found there was a festival going on with market stalls, performers, and a debate (in Italian.) So what could we do but sit in a cafe and soak up the atmosphere!
I can really see the attraction of living here!
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