Ciao chow for now

“My name is Luca Ferrari and I’m Italian”. Some seventeen years since first hearing those words I’m pleased to report they are still universally met with disbelief – come on, you’re pulling my leg huh...too Italian! And all with a North London accent! But now just outside of Milano, Italia, sits Luca Ferrari, still with accent, surprisingly still with hair, and with his lovely family, Valentina, Sam and Mattia. A weekend with a typical Italian family ensued, but I’m not sure how typical it is to be listening to random death metal and drinking warm ale under a canopy in pouring rain, having just returned from the park to ‘water the plants’. Sounds very English on reflection.

 

Typical family weekends often mean sick kids, and poor Sam was not at his best, but we managed some Anglo-Italian conversation and play, mostly involving robot building and a very monstrously defended castle. And Mattia joined us for happy trips to the local town and its food stuffs, including birthday frittelle prior to extra special birthday pizza. And to cap it all, a special late night surprise from Sky Sports and Europe provided the perfect gift for a weary, greying visitor.

There appeared to be many Americans not talking about the Ryder Cup in Florence the next day. Where do I start with Firenze? How about the impressive way of getting there, in less than 2 hours from Milan, on a comfortable, spacious train nudging 300 km/h? This does not seem to be the product of a bankrupt country, though perhaps the long tunnels channelling under the hills between Bologna and Florence tipped the debt scales higher. Still, there I was, in no time at all, having lunch and a glass of wine in a small alleyway off the Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio.  

Just round the corner was my hotel, on the 4^th floor of an apartment building, basic and dated, but quiet and quaint...and cheap. What I loved about this was walking down the stairwell, feeling like a local, opening a large wooden door and emerging into a bustling renaissance TV drama. What I didn’t like so much was the impossibly tiny shower and the mosquito that ate me alive on the first night.

The weather was certainly mosquito-friendly, humid with clouds building during that first afternoon, blue skies disappearing as I wandered the streets, crossed the famous Ponte Vecchio and grabbed a very fine gelato. And then, the heavens opened, just as I was hastily retreating back to the hotel, forcing me to duck under the extravagant arches of the courtyard of Palazzo Vecchio, the rain bouncing through medieval doorways and spraying down into the open square. It felt quite a cultured place to wait.  

Eventually things settled down enough to venture out again, crossing the River Arno once more and this time heading up to Piazzale Michelangelo, where the view of Florence was there to provide reward and recovery from the climb up the steps.

From here, the sun provided one final fiery cameo for the day, turning the still leaden sky a colour that perhaps inspired Dante to write about his inferno many years before. For me, the rest of the evening was more akin to purgatory, hunting just a little snack that didn’t involve pasta or pizza surprisingly hard, and of course being attractive prey to Florence’s mosquitoes.   

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The next morning eventually took me to the heavens, starting with a morning trying to get a little off the beaten track and do partially what the locals do. This includes standing up for a quick coffee and brioche, pottering around very random streets and squares, fighting your way through hordes of tour groups, and gaping at the length of the incredible (and thus impossible to  bypass) queue to see David or to squeeze into the Uffizi. I liked feeling slightly more local, though am amazed at how business still seems to happen in Florence in a regular nine to five way, as the city centre has more of a theme park feel than business centre.

One of my favourite places that I was very pleased to come across was the indoor produce market. Here, I could see many cuts of pig, smell the fresh tomatoes, inspect the different types of pasta, and eye up the hot roast porchetta rolls and the nearby arancini balls for later consumption. As featured on Masterchef Australia, for those who are sad enough like me to remember.

In terms of reaching the heaven that is a hot porchetta roll, one should first climb many, many steps of a quite sacred and decadent building. While Florence is blessed with an abundance of things with arches and crosses and flowery artworks, the Duomo is no doubt the centrepiece, rising high above the city, its giant dome startling you as you turn a street corner. Almost as high, the bell tower contains those many, many steps, with several levels from which to be amazed.

 

From here you could get a good sense of how Florence developed, by the river, surrounded by Tuscan hills, a pick n’ mix of long, straight Romanesque roads, patchwork alleys and palatial piazzas. Without doing any research whatsoever it would seem that the river (as they often do) played a defining part in how the city developed. To the south, grand hillside villas and sweeping olive gardens, to the north, pencil thin terraces and a mosaic of terracotta tiles. So, looking to become upwardly mobile, it was time to have a nosey south of the river.

Pitti Palace is the major extravagance south of the Arno, and attached to this are the grand Boboli Gardens, which are almost as fun to pronounce as to meader within. Initially a bit miffed at having to pay ten euros to visit some gardens, this faded once upon high and with sweeping views of the gardens, the palace, the city, and the Tuscan landscape creeping into the city on the other side.

Equally, the ten euros paid for what I believe were superior gardens, just further along the road at someone else’s plush residence. Quieter and more subtle, idyllically shady and with just enough enough tinkly renaissance water features stood the Bardini Gardens, again offering stupendous views over Florence from its weatherworn balustrades. Oh to live on the south side!

Some of those institutions shining out from the vistas of the south warranted further exploration by night and after an inevitable and quick pasta dinner it was a pleasure to wander again after dark. With fewer crowds, slightly cooler weather, and long-sleeve mosquito protection now on, what better way than to find some gelato by meadering up towards Duomo or down to Ponte Vecchio, or both? Surely stracciatella never tasted so good.

 

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On the third day I was keen to explore a little further afield, though torn in which direction to head I decided to book a coach tour to Siena, taking in a couple of random Tuscan villages along the way. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a typical coach day trip and in part it was a reminder of why – jam packed and regimented, at least it got me to places I wanted to go and offered plenty of free time in Siena.

Siena and Florence are like the Exeter and Plymouth of Tuscany, constantly vying for supremacy and the right to look down upon the other. In my Libran sitting on the fence way, can I say which I preferred more? Well, of course not, they are different in many respects. All I know is that I enjoyed the three hours I had to amble in Siena very much. Within those three hours, the pizza Toscana, with its thin, wood-fired crust, topped with four local cheeses and deliciously salty cold cuts was memorable. But so to was its sloping town square, its many arched alleyways, its impressively adorned and furnished cathedral, and its characteristic burnt Siena hues.

 

Maybe it was the pizza, or the fact that it is built on three hills, but Siena felt more quintessentially Tuscan than Florence. When I say quintessentially Tuscan I refer to that vague, idealistic vision I have of warm summers cycling though lanes of sunflowers and climbing a cobbled pathway to a hilltop church to sip a glass of Chianti and listen to the chattering English middle classes beside me discuss the possibility of Sam Cam running for mayor of London. How very lovely indeed.

Tuscany was definitely the word on the final stop for the day, at and around the hilltop town of San Gimignano. Now, from here comes a fine example of keeping up with the Joneses: two families in town with lots of money, one decides to build a big stone tower to show off, so the other builds a slightly bigger tower and this continues until 72 adorned the fairly small hilltop. Today, thanks to wars, plague, earthquakes, and pillaging from dodgy builders, fourteen remain, one of which you can climb. With my belltower practice, this was a synch, and spread out below was that quintessential Tuscany in my head.

 
In truth Sam Gimignano was a bit like Yvoire on steroids and other such things taken by USPS cyclists, and nowadays seemed to only exist for tourists to meander its fine medieval streets and buy gelato or fridge magnets or tea towels or personalised lighters. Still, given I was on a coach trip how could I complain? It would have been nice to have a little longer than the allotted hour, just to veer off the beaten path a little...to go to the edge of town and gaze out across a tomato patch to the vineyards beyond; to stroll down the hill and into the valley to follow a stream as it winds through a grove of cypress trees, marvelling back at the towers of S.G. as they rise abruptly from the land; to watch the sun go down after the coaches had made their way back to Florence or Siena or Pisa; and to sup a glass of Chianti with some bread and olive oil...

...but then this was a coach tour we are talking about and on such things a wine tasting stop is obligatory, right? This was one of the better ones I reckon, the tasting atop a hill, vines disappearing into shadow as the last, golden light is cast on surrounding hilltops, and, well, it would seem, free wine. And suddenly everyone on the coach is a bit more talkative and animated, for five minutes, until dozing all the way back to Florence.

A long day, and one in which I could have quite contentedly curled up into bed after, but tomorrow was a moving day, and Florence and Tuscany would be but a memory. When would I again be here, and have a chance to view the remarkable buildings and palaces and monuments, illuminated like planets in a field of stars? When would I again have the chance to climb my way up endless steps to Piazzale Michelangelo and share my blood with mosquitoes? When would I again have the opportunity for gelato in Italy?  I wasn’t so sure, so I went for a walk, up some steps with ice cream and some bugs to have a look. And then I went to bed even more contentedly, and content to move on.