Tuscan Temptations

Due to our delayed posting of the last blog update, and the incredible couple of days we’ve had, we’re updating with another blog sooner rather than later... We last blogged as we were on route to Pisa to start the Tuscan portion of our taste of Italy. We expected big things from Tuscany, being the home of some of the best Italian food and wine as well as historical sites such as Pisa and Florence. One aspect that immediately struck us was that Tuscany is a really pleasant place to drive through. Quite obviously our trip throughout Europe includes a lot of driving, in fact so far we’ve covered about 4000 miles, and we would say that our journey between stops is just as important as the destination itself because this is where you see the villages between tourist stops and the real living conditions of each region. You see the Sunflower and Lavender farmers in the south of France, the vineyard workers populating so many different areas of Europe and the granite miners in Tuscany are just a few examples.

Our stay in Pisa was deservedly short. This city is famous for one thing, a tower that was fairly poorly built and as a consequence has quite a lean to it, about 4.5degrees in fact. It’s quite fitting that the city is well known for this fact, as the rest of the city is also quite poorly built and even continues this trend with the distinct smell of urine within a lot of the streets surrounding the only maintained section of the city that immediately surrounds the leaning tower itself. The only outstanding aspect of this place is the fact that the tower is still standing (only after replacing about 80% of the tower to maintain the current lean, presumably to continue the “tradition” of the leaning tower) in its current state. One can’t help but think what would become of this city without its only drawcard?

Next stop, Florence (Firenze). This city holds the title of capital of Florence in regards to administration as well as culture. Florence, said to be the birthplace of the Renaissance, as well as home to some of the most influential figures of that period, including Dante, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo is possibly the most historically significant cities in Italy, and surely must be one of the most beautiful. Our camp ground is about 300 metres from the Piazza Michelangelo which gives the best view of Florence, and our camping ground has a bar that has a view which is just as good and sells bottles of local white wine for 2.50Euro so it’s been our local over the last couple of nights. Florence itself is full of museums, brilliant restaurants and local people selling their paintings. Speaking of brilliant restaurants, today we wandered to the part of town out of the tourist area and had lunch at a specialist Tuscan food restaurant. We walked in to see locals sitting around watching the F1 car racing with much interest. We sat down and ordered Bruschetta for a starter, then Jamie ordered a chicken dish served with white wine sauce, and Andrew had the legendary Florentine Steak. Jamie’s dish was OK, nothing outstanding, but it was real Italian food, so she was happy. When Andrew ordered the steak, the waitress got excited at the prospect of a tourist ordering the steak medium rare, and raced back to the kitchen to place the order for us. The arrival of Andrew’s steak was something special in itself. It arrived as a slab of beef on a breadboard as is customary for this dish. What followed was a state of bliss.... This 19Euro piece of heaven was definitely the best piece of meat we’re had in Europe, and one of the best steaks we’ve tasted of all time. It is a MUST ORDER on your next trip to Florence. After such a brilliant lunch, we got back to the camp ground just in time for showers and happy hour, which again, got fairly happy thanks to half price beers. On route to Rome tomorrow, probably staying somewhere along the west coast on the way.

A&J xoxox