Ne voglio ancora! Ne voglio ancora! (Tuscany)

Member Name: chris105

Product:	Tuscany
Date:	30/06/02 (184 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: countryside, food, everything

Disadvantages: let me think

Bumble-zee-boo! I'm actually back on dooyoo! Don't get too scared, I'm just dipping my fat toes into it, see how it goes kinda thing.

Tuscany then - me last holiday so far, and the perfect pick-up point for me dooyoo-ing seeing as my earlier dooyoo-days came to an end with that trip. Awwww, what a break that was (Tuscany, that is, not the dooyoo-abstinence). We flew off to Tuscany in early May, when it wasn't yet SO hot as to impede movement. In fact, we got more than we bargained for coz it rained for most of our stay.

Having both of us been to Florence before, we opted for the out-in-the-country stay, with a hired car for easy and schedule-free roaming about. We stayed at a place -particularly charming and cozy, I might add- just outside Siena [yes Malu you were right, Siena was the right base for our explorations]. You know the type, vast gardens, immense quiet all around, rooms overlooking tended gardens with picture-perfect Tuscan countryside on the horizon. And casual breakfast. But more on food later.

Tuscany is vast, with countless tiny and not-so-tiny villages and towns speckled all over the countryside. The rolling hills seen in films and postcards are really and truly there, in all their glory. The rule of thumb with towns is: the smaller the better. I used to think that San Gimignano was the epitome of a small town - only to find much smaller and much less tourist-infested towns (I shouldn't be giving out names here, to ensure their continued quiet living till my next visit, but seeing as it's you my faithful dooyoo readers, I'll drop one name: Pienza - vedere per credere, as the Italians would say). I believed that the laid-back way of life of small Italian villages, where the baker knows the butcher knows the grocer knows the pastry-man knows the commissario and all meet and chat every day under the benevolent gaze of the parroco of the inevitable church in the piazza, had gone the way of the dodo
after the Second World War. But how wrong I was! Not only are these villages thriving, but most of them (well actually it's thanks to this that they're still thriving) are ignored on most travel guides.

Heee heee

Che panorama! Che pace! Yes indeed, bring out all those dusty cliches, sprinkle with a couple of internet cafes (ahime yes, even in the remotest village you'll find one - which is actually kind of charming in its own way, if you think about it), and you have Tuscany the unexploited bits in 2002. And further, one hopes.

Obviously, the larger Siena, Pisa (and of course Florence, though we didn't go that far out into touristdom) have the usual tourism-itis, consisting of strategically-placed souvenir shops selling bric-a-brac of the more or less fake kind, junky cafes with inflated prices and impersonal service. The lot. But then again, you also get the treasure-trove of museums and works of art that make Italy, and Tuscany in particular, the beating heart of art in the world. The breathtaking amount of inestimable works of art, some lying unnoticed in a secondary piazza, for the laws of relativity (not the physics kind, the common sense kind) impose that where there is such over-abundance of art, works that would in any other country be the centrepiece of an art collection are in Tuscany relegated to second- or third-class status. How can you compare to a Michelangelo, even if you're an otherwise-esteemed Renaissance painter yourself? aaahhh

So that's the roaming. Indeed, do yourself a favour and hire a car when you're in Tuscany, the better to find all these charming places (you don't even need a travel guide - although that'd help - just drive and stop at any small village that tickles your fancy). Good luck.

But hey, you didn't think I'd made my grand return to dooyoo without mentioning food, glorious food, didya? I live for food as a matter of course, figuriamoci in
food-heaven Italy. It is said that it is impossible to find a bad meal in Italy, no matter how low in the restaurant-cafe chain you go. Well, not really - bum deals will be bum deals, wherever you go. But let's just say that it is infinitely more difficult to go wrong.

On the other hand though, when you don't go wrong, you go right alla grande. Food in the humblest of osterie or cafes is blindingly divine. Rule of thumb, here again, would be: the farther from a tourist area the place is, and the more unpretentious the decor, the better the food will be. One of our best meals there was an osteria in Pienza, where we ravaged dish after dish of their specialities, which were scribbled here and there on the walls of the place. Pienza being the birthplace of pecorino cheese, we gorged ourselves on varieties of cheese fondues we didn't even know existed, on platters of cheeses and hams to kill for, and on heartbreakingly fabulous wine.

Please, please take me back to Tuscany.

****

PS Hi to all my dooyoo friends - I hope to be around more often. Hopefully when work is a teeny weeny bit more sorted out.

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