Italy, Part 2 - Tuscany and more!

Welcome back! I last left you when we left the Cinque Terra region of the northern coast of Italy on our way inland to Tuscany. We had a car rental reservation ready for us in La Spezia, so we took the train there and managed to find an information office where we were instructed on what bus to take to the Hertz office.

See pics here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/bbergey/Tuscany#

The bus journey was actually quite interesting. We weren't exactly sure how the ticket situation would work, so we thought we would follow everyone else's lead. Some people walked right on and others validated a ticket they had already purchased. So we decided to just walk on and sit down. As the bus continued it's journey, it got rather full...very full. When we got to our stop, I had to lift my pack above my head to avoid hitting others standing in the isle. We got to the rear door and it started to close and the bus began to move! We yelled "wait!" and then an Italian man did the same in Italian for us. The driver stopped and opened the door, but the people blocking our way didn't move! Finally a lady stepped off the bus to make room but I didn't see that she just left a bag of groceries where she had been standing, so I knocked it over but had no choice to get off anyway. We made it off and walked across the street to pick up our car. We were upgraded to a manual, diesel car that was similar to my old Scion.

Megan was a bit nervous about the driving situation, so I took the wheel while she navigated with the rather poor maps we had with us. Unfortunately, the Hertz office was out of maps but he gave us pretty good written directions. It had been about 4 months since I had driven and I absolutely loved it!!! We made our way inland, into Tuscany, and arrived in the town of Uligiana (or U-town) where we would stay for the next three nights. Utown has a great location in the heart of Tuscany. Tuscany itself was much more hilly/mountainy than I had expected and was of course filled with vineyards and wineries. Most of the towns, big or small, are perched atop hills and have city walls. They are all very fortress-like and the towns are filled with old buildings, towers and archways. We also found all of the doors to be very fascinating and a lot of my pictures ended up being archways and doors. The city walls are leftover from ancient times when each town had to defend themselves from neighboring towns and the Romans. It makes the towns really unique and quaint, but hard to find ways to get in!

Our place in Utown was another beautiful B&B style hotel hosted by Guido. He spoke perfect English and showed us around. We then got back in the car and headed a few miles up the road to San Giogsoinsljhfyg (San-G, for short). San G sits on top of a large hill and can be seen for miles. It is a fortress like town with no cars inside, but once inside there are a lot of shops and restaurants. There are also a lot of flats where people live. It appears to be very very old and has a number of huge towers. We got some gelato to hold us over until dinner and Megan did some shopping at one of the jewelry shops. We picked a restaurant and got seated right when they opened. We ordered Bruschetta to start, and it was by far the freshest and best I've ever had. I also ordered a salad which came after my meal, so the waiter clearly didn't understand what I said when he asked when I would like my salad to arrive. For dinner, I ordered ravioli filled with Siena sausage and topped with walnut sauce. It was great! After dinner, we got yet another gelato and hung out by the old well in the middle of the square. On our way out, we stopped at a bakery where I got a mini almond flavored cookie and a lemon bar cake.

The next day we had planned to head up to Florence, but after a late start and some stalling at a local market and shopping in a nearby town, we decided to head to Siena instead. We stopped in a few more classic Tuscan villages on our way and eventually made our way to Siena. Siena is like a really big San G. It still has a city wall and lots of towers and neat buildings, but it is much bigger and busier. We eventually came across a huge square in the middle of town with a tower and surrounded by restaurants with outdoor seating. I said we had to eat here, so we did. We enjoyed the great sunshine and my first Italian pizza while people watching everyone passing by. We walked around town, found a really weird (and old) striped church, got some gelato, and came back to the square where we sat down and took a rest. Leaving Siena was quite interesting as we got a little turned around and I ended up driving down one of the small streets within the city wall...oops! We had also planned a scenic journey home which allowed us to see a lot of the country side, including a great view from a large hill/mountain.

We ate dinner at the only place in Utown, where Guido had called ahead and made reservations for us. He had ordered pizza from them earlier that night and he recommended it with a smile on his face. We immediately liked the place upon entering; it was small and simple with green paper table cloths. We ordered bread, linguine with tomatoes, basil and mozzarella, and 2 calzones. Mine had sausage, pepers and olives (with pits!). It was excellent and so was the pasta! We also got the house red wine which was served out of a huge glass jug (which we found out was very common for the rest of our trip). The best part was how cheap everything was...all of that plus dessert for 28euros! We went back to our room and watched some MTV on tv before falling asleep...the only station that we could even partially understand.

Our last day in Tuscany was a busy one, and we knew it when Guido and the other guests at breakfast laughed at us when we told them our plans for the day. We were hoping to visit Pisa, Luca and Florence. Luckily we were able to steal a guidebook (Rick Steves 2005) from the hotel which helped us plan what we should see and do in each place. First was Pisa, and our only motivation for going there was to get the classic picture in front of the leaning tower. We were surprised how nice the area around the tower was and there were a couple other really cool buildings to check out as well. We did get "the picture" which you will see. From there we got back to our car, which I'm pretty sure was parked on a road only for authorized vehicles, and headed toward Luca. We had a little trouble finding our way out of town, but we made it and the drive was great! We went over what seemed like a small mountain/pass and arrived in Luca and found a place to park.

Luca is another classic Tuscany style town with a village wall and very old buildings with towers and squares. We had heard great things prior to our visit, but I have to admit I was a little disappointed. However, I really liked the big, open square in the middle of town (which was actually circular) and they had a lot of really cool shops. I even did some early Christmas shopping! It was definitely less crowded and very chill compared to the other towns we had visited and it kinda reminded me of Italy's Boulder. We decided to grab some quick food at a shop and eat it in the car on our way to Florence.

When we arrived in Florence, we immediately realized it was the first main city we have experienced so far. It was really busy and there were a ton of scooters driving crazily on the roads. We finally found a place to park and started walking toward the central area of town. Florence is full of history, with many well known museums, cathedrals, bridges and chapels. Due to our helpful guidebook, we had called ahead and made reservations to visit the Academia Museum, which is where Michelangelo's David statue is kept. Yeah, it's the one with the penis. We located the museum, which had a huge line outside (which we would later bypass), but it wasn't our time yet so we explored the area a bit more. We visited the Duomo, which is the main cathedral in town. I can't remember why, but apparently it's a pretty big deal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Cathedral). The inside was beautiful and as everywhere in Florence, the architecture was amazing. It also has a great tower as well. We also visited the Medici Chapels and the San Lorenzo Basilica. Again, these were very neat buildings but I'm not sure of their significance. We then made it to our museum, which was full of paintings, statues, musical instruments, many other museum things, and The David. Although no pictures were allowed, I did sneak one anyway. I was surprised how impressive it really was and it is actually one of my favorite things we saw during the trip. You have to think about the detail in the statue without any modern conveniences or machines that we have today; pretty impressive.

Florence is situated on Arno river and there are a number of beautiful bridges that cross it. They are also full of history from ancient times when Romans and other enemies attempted to invade and disable Florence. The most well-known bridge, the Ponte Vecchio (if you heard it pronounced correctly, you'd probably recognize it) is an amazing bridge that is full of shops, mostly jewelery. It is open in the middle, however, and has great place to snag some photographs which you will see. We crossed the river to explore the other side a bit and then decided to hit up a restaurant recommended by our book that was a little out of the way. A 15 minute walk later, we found the restaurant that sits just outside the city wall. The book called it surprisingly cheap and very traditional so we thought we'd give it a go.

We were absolutely amazing how surprisingly cheap it really was. Each course was no more than 3-5euros and the house wine was much cheaper. Everything on the menu was in Italian, so we pulled out my trusty phrase book to help us figure out what everything was. We were pretty excited to have to learn everything, but the only English-speaking waiter eventually came to use and translated the entire menu for us. It was very nice of him but probably not necessary. We definitely "splurged" for this meal. We each got appetizers, a first course, a second course, vegetables, and split a dessert and it was still one of the cheapest meals we ate. And the food was great!

During our walk back to the car, of course all I had on my mind was Gelato, but for some reason we never stopped. We got back to our car and followed the signs back to the highway, which luckily took us to the top of the a hill that overlooked the entire city. It was absolutely beautiful at night, with the cathedral domes lit up and the reflections sparkling on the river. Even better, there was a gelato shop up top as well! We got some gelato, admired the view, and I even posed in front of the fake David statue too. Fortunately for all of you, I was fully clothed. We got back to the hotel pretty late, and completely beat, but we had successfully seen everything we had planned and didn't feel like we cut ourselves short either. What a great day!

Thursday morning we checked out of the hotel and stopped at San G one more time to find an Internet Point and do some final shopping. We also got some snacks and lunch to eat on our long drive to Rome. Tuscany overall was a great experience. You could easily spend weeks roaming the country roads, visiting all of the cities, towns and villages, and checking out the vineyards and wineries. Renting a car was a great decision and it really allowed us to experience a lot that Tuscany has to offer. But it was time to leave and off to Rome we went!