October 2022 Six Weeks in Tuscany Tuscany is my favorite region in Italy. Delicious food, good wines, beautiful landscapes, rich history, and marvelous art. So I rented an apartment in Firenze, capital city of Tuscany, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, home of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, of Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo Buonarroti, of Galileo Galilei and Niccolò Machiavelli, and so many other notable residents. My apartment was in the back of an old building on the South side of the river Arno. Right in front of the famous Giardino di Boboli (Boboli Gardens), a very large (45 square km) park built in the 17th century, a good choice for my morning walks (you actually have to pay to enter, but I bought a season pass to have access any time I wanted). I visited once more all the museums, palaces, and churches I already knew, and a few I didn't know yet, all filled with art treasures from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Galleria degli Uffizi is easily the best museum in town, showing Botticelli's Spring and The Birth of Venus, Uccello's The Battle of San Romano, Tiziano's Venus of Urbino, della Francesca's portraits of Duke Federico da Montefeltro and Duchess Battista Sforza of Urbino, da Vinci's The Annunciation, Caravaggio's Medusa, and so many other masterworks of the Renaissance. The Galleria dell'Accademia is much smaller but is home to Michelangelo's famous statue of David. Then there are all the palaces turned into museums of art and history: Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Palazzo Strozzi, Palazzo Pitti, Palazzo del Bargello... And, of course, the churches: San Miniato al Monte, San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, Santo Spirito, and the star among them, the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (which the locals call Il Duomo because of the impressive dome created by Filippo Brunelleschi). And to view all of this I climbed so many stairs. 463 steps to get to the top of the Duomo, 414 steps to get to the top of Giotto's Bell Tower, 416 steps to get to the top of the Palazzo Vecchio's tower... But what about the food? Ah, the cuisine of Tuscany... Pasta, of course, as you can expect anywhere in Italy. But so much more: Bistecca alla Fiorentina (Florentine-style thick beef steak served very rare), Spezzatino (meat fried and then stewed for a long time), Panzanella (salad made with tomatoes, onions, basil, bread, and a lot of olive oil), Ribollita (a soup made with a long list of vegetables), Ariza (roast pork loin), Filette di Maiale al Chianti (pork steak with Chianti wine). One of the most traditional dishes in Firenze is wild boar, which in Italian is called cinghiale, one of my favorite meats. There's even a bronze statue of a wild boar in the central market. The locals call it Il Porcellino (the piglet). And there are many dishes in many restaurants made with wild boar meat, the most popular probably being Pappardelle al Ragù di Cinghiale (boar stew over large strips of pasta). And then there's the wine. Most of them are made with the local Sangiovese grape. Chianti is the most famous internationally, and some of them are really good, but for an awesome experience I recommend the Brunello di Montalcino and the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. I enjoyed those wines so much that I even went to the villages where they are made to visit the wineries. Around Tuscany Firenze is a fantastic city but there is also much to be enjoyed in the villages and the countryside around it. I made a few little trips to places like Siena (famous for the yearly medieval horse race around the Piazza del Campo), San Gimignano (where they make the Vernaccia di San Gimignano white wine and also some good Chianti reds), Montepulciano (home of the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano), Pienza (beautiful medieval city), Montalcino (home of the Brunello di Montalcino and its baby brother Rosso di Montalcino), Pisa (yes, the tower is still there and still leaning), and Lucca (host to one of the largest European comics and games convention, but I was one month early for that). I also went on a trip to Liguria, the next region to the northwest, to see the marvelous Cinque Terre (Five Lands). I took a train on the way up and a boat on the way down, and visited all five little coastal towns that form the UNESCO World Heritage Site: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. Very beautiful. And after Firenze? I'm already in New Orleans, one of my favorite cities in the USA. But that's a story for another time. Laissez les bons temps rouler!   Copyright © 2022 Nemo Nox, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.