Three days in one?

Day two and last day in Florence.  This was a really quick visit.  We packed immediately when we got up this morning in order to leave our bags at the hotel until after our Ufuzzi tour.   Standard hotel breakfast is still meat, cheese, yogurt, bread and coffee or juice.  I’m starting to want some nuts, oatmeal and more vegetables.  We have had some nice salads at restaurants.  What we do get of course is very fresh.  

We strolled back to the river this morning a little way down from the Ponte Vecchio bridge to the Ufuzzi entrance.  The crowds are much lighter that early in the morning.  I’m not sure how large the museum is but we just did the fourth floor art that took us from to Raphael with the guidance of Rick Steve audio.   The art progressed from the focus being on Giotto: Madonna and Child and Fabriano: Adoration of the Magi into the Renaissance and the Botticelli: Birth of Venus.  The Medici during the Renaissance period started the self reliant period, stepping away from the protection of the church. You can see it as the art progressed.  Later Renaissance from DaVinci, Michelangelo and Raphael returned to Adoration and Holy Family.  Raphael’s Madonna painting of Mary with baby John (the baptist) and Jesus depicted such a sweet moment for the three.  It was fun to see the colors expand as time progressed!

On the way back for our bags, we grabbed some ‘take away’ sandwiches and stopped at a supermarket for extras like chips and we found more produce.  We brought along apples and carrots.  This is a big deal to us because we have not found markets with this variety!   We arrived early at the train station and decided to hop on the next train to Pisa!  Haha!  We ended up rushing back off because that train was going to take three hours to get there.   Our correct train took us 50 minutes to Pisa.  We checked in our bags at daily storage and did the 1 mile walk to the leaning tower!  Passing right through this city, we had to do it and take the required holding the tower up photo!  It really is worth the view with just a quick few hours stay in Pisa.  

One mile back to the train and the kids decided they needed a taste of McDonalds for comfort food although we NEVER eat that at home!  J  Fortunately our next train was right on time as well. Another 50 minutes to LeSpezia and and then switch to a short 10 min train ride into Riomaggiore.  Outside this second train ride, to the east the mountain rage has some incredible high peaks and rocky faces.  The view is stunning!    

 

Just a funny note:  Just after leaving the Tower, we walked by a row of trash cans and there was a man knocking on the side speaking something over and over.  We weren’t sure what to think; it seemed a little strange.   A couple of seconds later his co-worker came from the other side of the cans looking back nervously!   He stepped out to reveal that he was trying to make her think someone was trapped inside.  They laughed and we laughed.  It made the walk for us!

 

This day felt like two or threeJ  After three days of rest in Tuscany, we thought we would be fully refreshed.  That hasn’t really felt like the case though.  Two days into site seeing again and we are wiped out!  As with any site seeing trip, it requires some hurry up and wait moments.  We have been so fortunate to have on-time trains, catch the correct train and make it to where we need to be.  God has gone before us.  Diner tonight was served to us just below the kitchen window of our BNB.  It was phenomenal!   Being right on the water is going to have privileges!  The BNB is cut and completely unique.  There is a faucet sticking out of the wall and a clay sink on a pedestal on the wall in the sitting area.  I’m not sure if water will come out but afraid to try; it looks like it would shoot water at me!  The back of the place is wider than the front because of the placement in the hillside.  When you walk the tiny narrow streets of this town, there are just doorways and alley everywhere you turn.  Each one up or down steps.  This will be a fun couple of days!

Wish us luck with this!  

 

Renaissance

 One last breakfast with a view, visit from the black kitty and stroll around the property.  With a very sad goodbye, we drove away from Cesani!  None of us wanted to leave this beautiful, peaceful place!  It was a pretty lively drive despite our sadness in leaving.  As usual, there was at least one wrong turn.  We had the chance to stop at a gas station to fill the car and took advantage of the café attached to get a couple of cornetto to go with the wild boar sausage and really stinky cheese (I can’t remember the name).  Wild boar is really a big deal here, which seems like a great source of protein considering the rapid multiplication of the source!   We purchased ours in the medieval town of San Gimignano.  

In Firenze, John dropped us near the hotel while he went to return the car.  We walked back and forth a couple of times down the street until finding the street number.  We first walked into a school and someone was kind enough to guide me.  There is an amazing cage ‘lift’ to take us to the second floor.  The second floor really has one other floor between one and two.  The host was super kind.  The room is typical of what we have had in Italy.  This room actually has four beds but we’ve been having a double plus two twin.   We had a quick stack in the room once John arrived after his walk from Avis.   

The kids have had fun watching things like Shrek, Sponge Bob 

And tonight Walker, Texas Ranger in Italian

Our tickets to climb Brunelleschi’s Dome at the Duomo, the Florence Cathedral were for 2:15 so we had a quick turn around in the room and started walking across town.  Everything is actually very close.  It’s visible from the entire city, inspiring Florentines to do great thing.  It was constructed during the 13^th century but left with a big whole in the middle because they didn’t have the technology to finish it.  In the 1400s, Brunelleschi was called to travel to Rome to study the Pantheon, then return, calculate the dimensions and cap the dome Roman style.  It’s a dome within a dome and the 414 stairs to the top are between the domes.  They built it like an igloo to support itself.  So so worth the climb!  I would highly recommend the view of the city from the top and seeing the painting at the top inside.  The lower half is  actually a pretty frightening painting depicting hell in a way like a horror movie.   The upper parts depicting heaven.  This is very similar, but more horrible, to Micheal Angelo’s painting at the Vatican.   

This city is so so busy and it looks like it’s pretty much filled with tourists and less local people living life.  We did the busy market street down to the river to see the bridge Ponte Vecchio housing shops.  It’s really an amazing idea to build on top of a bridge!  After the slow stroll down to the river, we quickly made our way back to a pizza restaurant near the hotel.  We had our eye on it earlier in the day mainly because of the pizza oven.  Of course we ended the evening with gelato again and were actually in the room all showered by 9:15 tonight.  

                             Center of the bridge.

GraceLin did a little negotiating and bought a leather jacket.

Waiting for pizza! <3

The wine and the family

We both happened to wake up around 5 this morning so John 

suggested we take advantage of that to see the sun rise over the vineyard and olive trees.

The via Francigena path is along the road leading in and out of Cesani, both directions.  The path is a pilgrimage from Canterbury, England to Rome, Italy and is heavily hiked to this day.  The pilgrimage is for those wishing to visit the Holy See and the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul.   I learned that this is one of three main pilgrimage journeys for catholic faith.  The other two are in Spain and Jerusalem.   Just down the street is a church which is part of the journey.   It’s fun to watch the backpackers come by in the mornings.  We relaxed again for a while after breakfast and then walked down to the church and the very small village.  It’s called Pancole.  We walked along near a couple who had their dog with them.  Along the route are places you can stop to fill water bottles or give your dog water. J  They rested near the church and gave the dog snacks. 

 

Around noon, we had an unsuccessful journey into Certaldo, another nearby town which was much larger and more modern.   Although, Certaldo still has it’s medieval village up on the hill!  Carter wanted cereal and we thought we could pick up some snacks.  Well, not really!  We did find one supermarket type store but discovered that could not shop there.  It’s a coop and you have to be a member.  So sad because it looked a little more like a US grocery store where we could find some things.  The only thing we have found are small markets with meats and cheeses, wine, pasta and a few vegetables.  I made a mistake a coupe days ago with veggies in Terni at the market and the clerk was not happy with me.  I did not try that again today because I don’t understand the process.  We got water and potato chips! J

 

This afternoon, the kids joined us for the beginning of the wine tour so they were able to see the cellar which is the barrel room and bottle in room all in one.  We watched an extra large hawk fly down into the vineyard for a catch.  Our guide Antonio could not remember the name of the bird in English.  Cesani was purchased by Maria Louisa’s grandfather in the 1940s and her father still works the farm every day and he began working it as a young boy of around 12.  We’ve seen him out on the tractor early mornings and later afternoon.  They have about 50 acres and 27 acres of grapes.  They also produce about 10,000 bottles of olive oil.  A few food items stand out – cream of cod which was place on a slice of baguette, cooked pork which was preserved in olive oil, and truffle patte’ wrapped in butter.  All of it is amazing!  

This is an organic farm.  Louisa said that in Italy, there is a beginning of awareness, as we have in the US, to produce better, more organic.  The history of the grapes here is so interesting.  One of the whites I liked best is from 45 year old vines which do not produce as much anymore but they decided to keep them just for this special wine.  He did say that with this acreage they could produce a lot more but want to keep the quality so they keep it smaller batches. They also still age some red in concrete which isn’t done often anymore.  

Tomorrow we leave but for now, we are all sitting in comfy chairs overlooking the hills.  Vincenzo is on the tractor between the vines apparently keeping the weeds down.  Birds are chirping and the very rare car drives by.  So, so very grateful for the quiet and beauty here!  Amazed at the glory of God’s creation!

Rest and San Gimignano

We are so so very happy to rest!  I can’t even explain that!   Our agenda has been a little aggressive but how often do we get to explore history in this way.  You do what you should when given this opportunity!  Breakfast is 8-10 so we plan to push that late time each morning and get some extra sleep.  After breakfast, we sat outside our apartment overlooking the vineyard and took turn catching up on washing our clothing in the sink then hanging it to dry around the patios.  We packed only carry-on luggage so laundry is a daily activity for the most part.  The last few days put us a little behind in that area.  After all the laundry was hanging, John went to get us a bottle of white wine and we moved to the swimming pool.  The kids tried to swim a bit but the water is cold so they opted for reading books.  

 Thunder and lightening moved us under shelter but we forgot about our outdoor hanging clothing.  Oops.  It can dry tomorrow.  We eventually moved back inside for a bit of naps and snacks.  Later in the afternoon, we drove over to explore San Gimignano which is the medieval town very close by.  The city is still completely surrounded by the wall that once protected the city.  Of course all of these towns/villages are at the top of of a hill with views all around.  We walked around a while, had gelato and ate pizza before tiring out again.  

Most areas inside the town walls are inhabited today by businesses and homes!  So amazing!  

At the end of the evening, John and I grabbed a blanket and glass of wine to enjoy the late evening view of the vineyard and beauty of the area!

Cesani in Tuscany!

 We got a car today!  Carter still wasn’t feeling great so we packed his things and John carried his bag.  He was able to carry himself, his day pack and part of the time drag the rolling bag.  We were able to have breakfast at Hotel Lodi this morning which was a very simple danish and coffee affair.   The walk to the train station was about a half mile, the train ride two stops or about 15 minutes and another ¼ mile walk to Avis car rental!   John was anxious and excited about driving in Italy, especially about getting from inside the city of Rome to the freeway.  He was anxious for nothing and handled it like a pro!

 The Apennine Mountain range surprised us the most along the drive north to Tuscany.  The range is so much higher than I expected.  Obviously I haven’t researched that! J  Traffic was pretty light so smooth traveling.  As we drove through the countryside, we realized that not just the ancient cities are representative of so much history but the entire country, that we’ve seen so far.  I think I learned that if you are building, nothing can be removed but you can rebuild on top of what already exists just like has been done in history.   Very quickly we began to see remains of medieval architecture.   Imagine – 1000 to 1500 year old architecture.  We can only see anything in the states just a few hundred years old and even then, so many things are destroyed to build something new.  I love the preservation of history! 

We made a stop along our drive to see sights and have lunch.  In reality, we were not on the same page but had not communicated.  John really wanted to see Siena but I didn’t realize. We also did not have a plan really so he asked me to find a spot.  I also didn’t realize that if we did not make it to the vineyard by 7PM, we were out on the streets; sleeping in the car.  Whatever that would have looked like, it wouldn’t be good!  I suggested that we make a detour to Terni where the tallest man made waterfall in the world would be nearby.  In actuality, Terni was about 45 min out of our way and is not a tourist town.  No one was expecting to see tourists who really don’t speak their language.  We were able to get by ordering lunch in a beautiful square and had the most amazing insalada.  We also had Cacia de Pepe which is basically noodles with olive oil, Parmesan cheese and pepper but amazingly delicious!!  We also got to drive down one of those streets where you don’t think the car will fit!  

The fact that we are driving my literal castles in the countryside blows my mind!  The three major medieval ‘power houses’ in this area were Pisa, Florence, and Siena (we will see two of three).  One major note along the drive was that every structure is so simply made of stone and more recently some things are stucco but everything is a natural stone color and very low maintenance.  I’m wondering why we create homes in the US that are so high maintenance.

Such a beautiful country!

Ultimately, we made it to the Vineyard, Cesani, in time with no rush!  The world around us is unbelievably gorgeous!  Again, the hills are higher than expected and more than we imagined.  We are renting a two bedroom apartment with a full kitchen.  GraceLin was beyond excited because she has not cooked in over a week!  The hostess, Maria Louisa, grew up here on the vineyard.  She is supper kind.  She sent us around the corner to ‘Il Rustica’ for dinner.  She called them to make a reservation and put it in the name Cesani.  It made me laugh because it’s about 300 feet walk from our apartment and my guess it that the restaurant is also family! J  Either way, it was outstanding food and environment!   We settled into the apartment, sang a terribly GA Lyman’s version of Happy Birthday on a voice memo to send Foster who has an excellent voice (I’m so sorry Foster!) and then walked around the corner to enjoy dinner.  After dinner, we watched the Anvil Academy graduation.  We were all sad to miss the kids friends graduate this year!  That is such a special event!  Congratulations Anvil graduate class of 2023!!  Windows open again tonight, it’s a beautiful place to fall asleep!