“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 4th 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.
Just to ensure the Green Bogey
Down Under does not become a misnomer let’s talk about Australia. It’s spring
in Australia right now and how utterly fabulous. The streets no longer a scene
from Bergman, whose bleakness of winter has been replaced by a bright
Teletubbie land of yet-to-be-tarnished greens and exploding blooms. It helps
that I live in probably the most manicured garden suburb of probably the most
manicured garden city in Australia, but it’s been a pleasure to walk to the
shops, often for a coffee.
It’s funny that I’ve come back to
Australia and have been revelling in elements actually so foreign: the
introduced non-native Wisteria, the deciduous elms and oaks, the remnants of
Cadbury’s chocolate from Heathrow. But Canberra is nothing if not a fusion of
worlds, and a short walk through its leafiness invariably brings you into the
bush, that land of long golden grasses, gnarly white gums, and multicoloured
birds. A dusty sky one (wonderfully daylight savings timed) evening lending
itself to a mood of bush ballads, red dirt, and what lies beyond. 
Crowds were out in force along
the Eastern Suburbs Coastal Exhibition Treadmill, or the Coogee to Bondi walk
as its otherwise known. Still, there are always pleasant things to look at, in
all directions. This time some added extras, courtesy of Sculpture by the Sea,
or I don’t really understand by the sand, as it is also otherwise known. 
More abstract piles were on the
cards the next day, courtesy of a brief visit to the new improved Museum of
Contemporary Art. Not a bad way to while away a morning, especially as it is
positioned at A1 down on Circular Quay, the cafe on the fourth floor bedecked
with cakes and views and worthy of a future visit without having had a heavy
breakfast beforehand. And then...wait for it...yes it had to
happen...sadly...work. I know, can you believe it? I can’t, and the shock sent
me in a cold sweat to a small room to eat beans on toast for dinner. 
