Florence and Tuscany

We arrived in Florence in the evening via train. It was a fast trip of about two hours taking the Eurostar. I slept as much as possible but caught some good views out of the window. I remember the most a very high strung guy sitting next to John talking on his cellphone almost the whole way. It's funny, most professionals here wear very nice suits. You don't see a lot of polos or business casual dress folks. Anyways this guy in a suit kept calling many people on his phone and not yelling but speaking very impatiently and abrubtly. I don't know how many times I heard him say, "Punto!!" "Punto!!". I overheard him talk about San Franscisco once or twice t00. It made me think he worked in the finance business because he wasn't very happy.:)Anyways, once between phone calls I smiled at him and he didn't even return the smile. Poor guy - he needs a new job.


Once we arrived we walked to the hotel unloaded our gear and headed out into the land of Florence. :) A lot more quaint here then Rome, but still a major city. Just not as much energy. We tried a little family restaurant that had just OK gnocchi (potato pasta), but some YUMMY Tuscan stew. It's a roast stuffed with celery and carrots then simmered in a tomato reduction for hours. It was sooooo yummy. Something to search online for a recipe. :) Also, some gelato for the second night in a row. Now, you may think we'll be returning 20 pounds heavier then we left, but no, you walk soooo much here it's impossible. Streets are so narrow most drive mopeds (or very little cars). The traffic is insane. Pedestrians take up most the street until a moped or car attempts to run you down. I haven't noticed what the rules of the road are - I don't think there are any. None of the roads in the city are striped and you can see two cars side by side or three - who knows how many lanes there are. I guess it's what you make. Also, who has the right of way pedestrians or car/moped? It's whoever is bravest. :)


So this morning we woke to an amazing breakfast at the hotel and raced to meet-up with our tour leaving for tuscany. Then to find out we read our watch wrong and were and hour early. We spent some time sipping a cappuccino and visited a few leather bag stores (leather is a huge commodity here). Finally, we met with our tour at 10 a.m.


Our tour guide's name was Christina. She was American with an Italian family. Her family moved to the US right before she was born (father was a jesuit priiest that went A-wall-interesting story) so all her siblings and family are Italian except for her. She speaks perfect English and moved to Florence in 04 to study Italian and is still trying to get Italian citizenship even though every member of her family is Italian. I guess is very hard to obtain. Anyways, she had a real passion for wine and we learned so much from her. I could go into all the details, but I'd be typing this forever, the main point we learned about was how Italians categorize their wine not by grape type, as do Americans, but by region and level (whether its a wine the gov't regulates because it's been around for so many years or just a simple table wine that has no regulations). So apprently Chianti is not a grape but a region and there's a HUGE variety of chianti's out there. Now we're more educated looking at our italian menus choosing a wine. We had great company on our tour. Most were American or Canadian and great to visit with. :) Here's some pictures: