Day 12 Florence: August 18

 

Monday was our last meaningful day in Italy. We were flying home on Tuesday. We booked a bike tour to see part of the Tuscan countryside. The tour company arranged an experience based on our preferences, including an easy bike ride, a cooking class, and a visit to two medieval Italian villages. Our tour guide, Jason, was a Brit who moved to Italy about 10 years ago. He picked us up in Florence and drove us to the tiny town of Castellina in Chianti. We walked around the town while Jason unloaded our bikes. Castellina in Chianti is built on a hill and the castle is at the very top. It was built by the Squarcialupi family. In Italian, "squarcia" means "to tear up" and "lupi" means "wolf", so the family name gives some sense of the violent times they lived in (and possible contributed to).

The Via dell Volta, an underground walkway, was designed by Brunelleschi, the architect and builder of the dome of the Duomo. This tunnel has been part of the town's defenses from the time it was built in the 1400s until the most recent conflicts in World War II, including a 44 day siege when the town of Sienna attacked in 1452.

Today the tunnel is fun to explore and the military defenses have been replaced with small shops and restaurants.

Windows in the tunnel look out over the countryside.

Chianti is a region of Tuscany and the symbol of Chianti is a black rooster. The symbol dates back to the Middle Ages when Sienna and Florence were fighting over the Chianti region. The legend goes that after a bloody war, the people of Sienna and Florence decided to settle the boundary between the two cities with a competition. On the same day, one knight from each city would ride towards the other city, leaving as soon as the first rooster crowed. The border would be drawn where the knights met. The Sienese people chose a white rooster and pampered the rooster in the days leading up to the competition. The Florentines chose a black rooster and starved it in an uncomfortable cage. The black rooster, miserable in its cage, crowed long before the sunrise on the appointed day and the Florentine knight got a big head start on the Sienese knight, who was waiting for the comfortable rooster to crow. Thus, the boundary between Florence and Siena is only a few kilometers away from Siena, the place where the two knights met. Today, the black rooster is a symbol of the Chianti region and farmers have the privilege of marking their products with it.

With our helmets on and bikes ready to go, we set off on our bike ride. 

We kept a leisurely pace. Brandan took some of these photos as he rode and Jason took others. Jason drove the support van a few miles ahead and then waited for us to catch up, making sure we didn't get lost and pointing out some of the features we were riding past. We started out riding through pine forests that smelled heavenly.

Jason took this photo.

Brandan took this one.

We had asked for an easy bike ride and it would be hard to imagine an easier one than this. We rode 12 miles, all downhill. Basically we coasted. This year's Giro d'Italia, Italy's premier bike race, held a stage in the same area we rode in, but they went up and down the hills, not just down. And the bikers probably didn't coast.

We only saw a few cars the whole ride and one motorcycle that zipped by us three or four times. Riding was pure pleasure.

We rode out of the forest into farmland where we mostly saw grapes growing, Chianti is famous for wine.

This valley is called "Conca d'Oro", or the golden bowl, because the climate is ideal for growing grapes.

The grapes will be harvested in September.

Here's a close up of one vine.

Olive trees also grow well in the region. Jason told us the farmers harvest the olives in October. Looking from the road, we couldn't see any olives to harvest.

Jason invited us to look closer. These olives will be made into olive oil and the olives are green and tiny. From a distance, the olives blend in with the leaves. It takes all of the olives from two trees to make one liter of olive oil.

People have been growing olives and grapes in this region for almost 3000 years, dating back to the Etruscans.  

We rode past farmhouses, villas and this small church.

We ended our ride outside a town called Poggibonsi. This is the route we took. Google maps thinks it would take 44 minutes to bike. We took a leisurely 2 hours, with lots of stops to admire the scenery and take photos.

This is a photo of Jason, taken after he loaded up our bikes. Jason was a terrific guide, a naturally curious person who shared his experience as an immigrant to Italy, a largely positive experience with a few quirks unique to Italy. 

Our next stop was a cooking class, held at the home of our teacher, Fulvio, who lived near Poggibonsi. At Fulvio's house, we met a family from Denver who booked the class through a different agency. Clockwise from the left are Brandan, Marie, Kenny, Helen, and David. Marie is a judge, David is a lawyer specializing in contract law and Helen and Kenny are their 23 year old twins. Kenny is working in New York after graduating from college and Helen is in grad school. Our first task was making homemade pasta. We each mixed a little bit of pasta dough and made a hand rolled kind of pasta called pisi. Then we chopped tomatoes for bruschetta and made garlic bread by rubbing freshly grown garlic cloves on toasted bread.

Fulvio had us prepare three kinds of pecorino cheese with different toppings including honey, freshly ground nutmeg and onion jam.

We made two kinds of pasta sauce, a red sauce using tomatoes from Fulvio's garden and a white bean sauce. Fulvio had a small kitchen and he had us each take turns to prepare lunch. Here Fulvio is instructing Becky to crush the oregano between her hands to intensify the flavor before adding it to the white bean sauce. We used olive oil from Fulvio's olive trees for all of the dishes.

When the pasta was ready, we moved to the dining room for lunch. We started with the bruschetta and cheese as an appetizer.

Then we ate the white bean pasta sauce on shell shaped pasta. 

Followed by the red sauce which Fulvio served on the pisi we made earlier. Although pasta is a common first course in Italy, usually people just eat one kind of pasta, not two. But this was a cooking class so we ate both.

We went back to the kitchen to make our second course, Saltimbocca. This dish was made of a very thin slice of chicken breast, topped with garlic, sage, and a slice of prosciutto.

We covered the meat with flour and fried it in olive oil. It cooked very quickly. Fulvio told us that Tuscan food is simple, relying on high quality ingredients for flavor. Tuscans worked hard, long hours on their farms and didn't have a lot of time to spend cooking at the end of the day. Saltimbocca means "jump into your mouth" and the idea is the dish is so delicious you will want it to jump into your mouth quickly.

Lunch took about three hours and we enjoyed every minute. The family from Colorado was delightful and our teacher, Fulvio, was charming, helping us prepare a delicious lunch that we can easily imagine preparing again at home, although maybe not all at once as one meal. It was a lot of food.

Jason picked us up again after lunch and drove us to San Gimignano, another town that looks like it is frozen in the Middle Ages. San Gimignano is a gem which we are glad we visited, and having Jason drop us off and pick us up two hours was ideal. 

Jason recommended we get gelato at Gelateria Dondoli. He told us not to be put off by the long line since the line moves quickly.

He was right. There were about 10 workers at the counter and soon we were enjoying some delicious chocolate gelato. Jason explained a little why gelato tastes better than ice cream. Gelato is churned slowly, so it doesn't mix in as much air as ice cream. It has less fat and is stored at warmer temperatures which makes the flavors stronger. Gelateria Dondoli stands out in a country filled with above average gelato for its commitment to small batch artisanal gelato made with the highest quality ingredients.

San Gimignano is built on a hilltop so you are either walking uphill or downhill. This is the main piazza.

This is the church in the piazza.

We saw a man quoting Dante (we think based on the fact he was dressed like Dante) in another piazza.

We watched a potter work in another shop for a few minutes.

The side streets in the town are narrow.

The entire town is picturesque.

We liked the little section of tiled roof covering this doorway.

We stopped at the San Gimignano 1300 Museum which is basically one room. It houses a 1:100 scale model of San Gimignano in the 14th century. The church in the center is the same church we saw outside. The model took three years to build, meticulously using all available records to recreate over 800 structures. In the 1300s, the town boasted 72 towers. Unlike Castellini in Chianti that has one castle with one tower in the center, families in San Gimignano each built their own tower for defense. And possibly got a little competitive by building a little taller than the tower next door.

The towers are remnants from a much more violent past when families might seal the door to their towers and rely on its strength to protect them until the danger of the day (or longer) had passed. This larger model of a tower shows how the towers looked inside. 

Today only 14 out of the 72 towers are still standing

Today the only dangers are hordes of tourists. This is the beautiful view from the top of the city wall.

Jason picked us up and answered all our questions as we drove back to Florence. We returned with time to pick up our luggage and catch a train to Rome.

We enjoyed a comfortable ride, reflecting on our magnificent trip. Every day was filled with rich experiences, greater understanding of the world, greater appreciation for each other, and gratitude for the marvelous gift of spending two weeks in Italy.