The Heart of Tuscany

Photo of the Tuscany farmland and hills from our backyard.

The sun streaming into our bedroom woke us up early and I went out and took the picture above at around 08:15. We are in the middle of nowhere and it’s wonderful. Our refurbished barn is in an olive grove which is full of songbirds eating the olives as they are very ripe and starting to fall. Went for a nice walk to check the area out and it’s definitely in the country as all that is around us is farms, vineyards and more olive groves. It seems you can see for miles. We are definitely in the rolling hills of Tuscany. After breakfast we took off for Siena, which is 12 km away. Il Campo, Siena's main Piaza

700 years ago, Siena was Florence’s main rival for banking and trade. It was also a major military power and had a population of 60,000 which was greater than Paris. In the mid 1300’s it lost over 1/3rd of its population to the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) and it never fully recovered. Florence conquered the city in the 1550’s making it totally irrelevant to the outside world. We should thank Florence for this as Siena is now considered Italy’s best medieval city experience. Its population today is still around 60,000 while Florence is 420,000.
After spending a day wandering around Siena, both Rita and I enjoyed it more than Florence, which is saying something. Most buildings are constructed with brinks made from the local red soil. The color has been officially named Burnt Siena and you can check it out when you look at your kid’s box of Crayola’s. It’s a very easy place to walk, although it’s very hilly. There are lots of piazzas that have a variety of café’s so you can sit in the sun and watch the world pass by as you sip cappuccinos and enjoy a slice of their local fruit cake called panforte.

View of Old Siena and the surrounding countryside

Geoff showing relief as he exits from his favorite place, the local WC

Old Town of Siena at sunset with the City Tower in the background. Its the largest tower of its kind in Italy.

Before we headed home we needed to pick up some groceries at the local supermarket. This would not be exciting enough to include in the Blog, but I discovered that the Italians had made two great improvements to grocery shopping that I had not seen before. We parked our car on the 2nd level of their parking lot and picked up a grocery cart from one of the racks. They have an airport type escalator that allows you to take the cart with you down to the store. There is also an escalator from the store back up to the parking lot so you do not have to carry your bags. The carts have a brake mechanism in the wheels so they can’t roll backwards. Very efficient, especially for us older folks. I saw the other improvement when we went into the fruit and vegetable section. Everyone was wearing a pair of throw-away plastic gloves so that your skin does not have contact with the fresh foods. You pick up the gloves next to the plastic bags.

Rita wearing her newly acquired plastic gloves allowing her to sqeeze the tomatoes