Nov 18 – 21, 2009 – Chianti – Tuscany, Italy – Volterra and San Gimignano

Charlotte and Allister have been reading the Twilight series of books on this trip (and are interested to get home so they can go the movie) and one of the settings in that movie is Volterra, a village not far from where we stayed in the B&B in Marcialla.

It was a walled city situated on top of a hill (like San Gimignano below) and offered a nice blend of modern tourism facilities and historic buildings.

Standing on the fortification walls offered views like this one.  We noticed a number of these plowed and cleared fields throughout Italy and wondered whether they had grown a crop or were laying fallow because they seemed like they were part of some cultivation program.   

It turned out these fields had hosted a sunflower crop that had been harvested and was waiting for next year’s growing season.

A gate on Volterra’s walls that was built by the Etruscans who, if my memory is correct, predated the Romans in the area.

This is San Gimignano from a distance.  Its easy to see why its known for its towers.  I think I read that there were 13 at one time in its history.

Located as it was on a hilltop, there were lots of stairs and elevation changes to negotiate as we moved around the town.

This was the first place we saw evidence of preparations for Christmas.

Nov 18 – 21, 2009 – Chianti – Tuscany, Italy – Siena

Twice annually, in the summer months, Siena hosts a horse race around this square.  Siena’s seventeen neighborhoods each have an entry, a bareback horse and rider, that compete with the other neighborhoods for bragging rights.

 

The start-finish line is in front of this souvenir shop and contestants make three laps of this square, completing the race in just over a minute.

Siena appeared to be a university town but also had an impressive basilica made from dark and light stone (the first we had seen like this, Florence provided further examples).

 

Here is one of the flags that fly in neighborhoods around Siena that designate one of its seventeen neighborhoods.

Nov 18 – 21, 2009 – Chianti – Tuscany, Italy – Florence

Roberto and Sonia, our B&B hosts gave us some great directions to get to Florence.  Drive up the Florence-Siena highway until it ends at a city called Galluzzo and then park there and take the bus into Florence.  They even told us which bus stop to get off and where to find the return bus.

We followed their instructions to the letter and it worked out great – like many other European cities we visited, Florence was not a place you wanted to have your car.

I liked this picture of the rowing club beside the Arno River.  Taken from the Pont Vecchio.

Here is the real business of the Pont Vecchio – jewelry.

A picture of the Pont Vecchio from near the rowing club shown in the photo above.

We passed the much-described Uffizi Gallery lineup and although we didn’t go into the Uffizi, we thought it worth taking a photo of one of the benefits of off-season travel.

Art is everywhere in Florence.

While we didn’t visit the Uffizi, we went to the Accademia so we could see Michaelango’s David.  Although technically photography is not allowed here, Charlotte managed to sneak this snapshot.

We passed a market and Laura-Lyn saw this cross between (I think) cauliflower and broccoli.  We don’t know what it tastes like, but it sure looks interesting.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t include at least one photograph of the Tuscan pottery which was very colorful and more than once I wondered if it might be worth investing in a piece.

We didn’t go visit Florence’s Baptistry, Duomo, Tower or its museum – there is a limit to how many museums 12 year kids want to visit.  But Charlotte and Allister did visit a Leonardo da Vinci museum that had some models of his inventions on display and for interaction.  Also, as a family, we went to the Science Museum and saw a exhibition of telescopes, including Galileo’s first telescope.

Nov 18 – 21, 2009 – Chianti – Tuscany, Italy – Marcialla

On our way to Certaldo-Marcialla we passed this tree farm whose rows of trees are visible even from a moving car.   We saw many of these in stands of trees.

This is a rig we would like to see in North American.  It included two temporary stop light units that managed traffic through a single lane of highway while work blocked a lane.  We saw these in Germany, France and again in Italy and they seemed like a good idea.

This was our bed and breakfast in Marcialla – Podere Montagione.  It was beautiful and made us wonder how much nicer it would be in the summer when the weather was 30C rather than 15C.  The building on the left was the B&B and the one on the right (more visible in the following picture) was the home of Roberto and Sonia, our B&B hosts.  Parts of their home were over 1000 years old – although you’d never know it to look at it – modern but very charming.  The B&B building contained about 5 or 6 rooms – we used two – the kids had a set of bunk beds in one room and Laura-Lyn and I had a double bed in the other.

This is a better photo of the main house and B&B.  To the right of where this picture was taken was a swimming pool that the kids were sad was not open at this time of year. 

Roberto and Sonia had a story about approaching the regional council with the idea of installing a swimming pool and described a curved design set at an angle that followed the road.  They were told Certaldo (the region), is “not Hollywood” and that the pool could only be rectangular and installed at right angles to the B&B building.

This was the first place we saw lots of cats in Italy but it was not to be the last.  Roberto and Sonia were animal lovers and had at least 5 cats and had taken a hunting dog into their care for a few days while we were there until its owner could be located.  Here Laura-Lyn and Charlotte are playing with a couple.  They also had a home in the Florence area but this was their main residence – they liked ‘the country’.

The property was located on a ridge in the rolling countryside and offered views like these in at least 2 directions.

Here is a picture of our family with Roberto and Sonia as we were about to leave.

 

Roberto and Sonia’s home and B&B were located about 3 kms outside the village of Marcialla.  This is its main square.  Sonia told us that Laura-Lyn’s cousin, Sharron Bates, went here for dinner most nights during her stay which took place in the summer when the village of Marcialla establishes an outdoor cafe for visiting tourists.

Nov 18 – 21, 2009 – Chianti – Tuscany, Italy – Pisa

Our next door neighbors at home, Loris and Leslie, had said Pisa was worth the stop but only to collect the photos of the Leaning Tower.  We followed their advice to the letter, stopping on our way from the Cinque Terra to Tuscany.

Two views of the famous leaning tower.

The leaning tower is part of a complex that two other impressive structures – the Baptistery at the left and the Duomo on the right of this photo.  If we could have included the Tower in this photo it would have been on the right of the Duomo in this photo.