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More heavenly days of touring around with Ham, Ariane and Rose

These emails have been so infrequent because we’ve been SO busy. Having a car makes you want to see and do everything while you have the opportunity and this we have done. This past week with the kids in Tuscany has truly been amazingly wonderful. But let me pick up where I left off after the day in Pisa.

The next day, Thursday we headed off to Genova for the day. We just got on the autostrada and got ourselves there and then spent the rest of the day exploring the streets of Genova. What a great city! Reminiscent of Naples in that it is centred around a thriving port and a city that has seen the splendour of the seafaring heyday. But Genova has an elegant side with beautiful old palazzos lining the streets in the upper town. You can just imagine the ancient splendour. It also has a seedy/ edgy side to it like Naples. So full of life and people and activity and decay. A large immigrant population adds to the life of the city. We all loved it. We went and had a great lunch…full of the pesto that originated in Genova and (for me) the fish! Then we wandered around the tiny, winding streets of the old port town. We walked up to the more elegant area with all the palazzos that lined the streets and once buzzed with life. We went into Palazzo Reale that is now a museum with the opulence of the times on display. Totally gorgeous really. To the Duomo, a quick aperitivo, then finally back to the car and home to Lucca. Home late to Lucca and then out to find a Pizza for dinner. A big day!

Friday we retraced our steps almost to Genova but turned off to explore the Italian Riviera and get an injection of the world of the rich and famous. First to Rapallo with its old, decaying seaside mansions, castle on the water and lovely water front promenade. Then on to Santa Margherita where we had lunch, wandered around a bit to take in the sites and then on to Portofino…the jewel in the crown of the Italian Riviera. It is so beautiful, it really is. It still has the air of a small, beautiful fishing village despite the obvious presence of the rich and famous with the amazing yachts and the expensive restaurants. For all this it doesn’t seem to lose its charm. We had THE most delicious gelati there and sat by the waterfront in the sun. It was really lovely. Then home again, back along the windy cliff edge road. Back in Lucca we had dinner at Ristorante All’Olivio where Rose and I had been before H&A arrived in Lucca. It was a splendid meal. In fact I think I had the best meal I’ve had in Italy. It was heaven. A beautiful fresh pasta with tomato and superb mozzarella- type cheese, followed by the most divine pigeon you could ever imagine. It was so tender and so delicious. I was ecstatic. Then my desert was to die for…a pannacotta- type thing with an orange sauce. Impossible to describe!

Saturday. Ham and Ariane’s last day in Tuscany and what better way to spend it than touring around the Chianti area with wine tastings and a lovely lunch at a futuristic winery…Antinori nel Chianti Classico. It was a most beautiful day really. It was sunny and warm and the drive was just too beautiful for words. We went to Castello di Verrazano to taste their wines (and buy a couple of bottles), then on to enjoy a lovely lunch with local wines, then drove some more through vineyards, olive trees, castellos and ancient hilltop villages before going to Volpaia, Radda in Chianti for another tasting (and purchasing) and then home. A Glorious day really.

For their last night in Tuscany Ham and Ariane had their choice of restaurants to go to for dinner which very predictably saw us back at the best of the best, Ristorante Giglio for our magnificent Last Supper. Again the first dish is always wonderfully fresh pasta and then Ham and Ariane shared a Bistecca- about a kilo of the most tender and tasty meat you could wish for. Ham particularly really got into it demolishing the massive T-bone! Rose and I were marginally more delicate but definitely not left behind with Veal cheek and pork. We won’t go into the amazing desert of semi-freddo ice-cream with crackly chocolate sauce…oh my god!!!

This morning was very sombre for the mumma. We got up, got organised, walked to the car park with H&A getting a coffee on the way and then had to sadly wave them off to Pisa for them to catch the plane back to London. What a lovely, lovely time it has been. I’m so lucky to have a few more days with Rose here in Lucca but already the end is nearing and I will so hate to see such a lovely time come to an end. But before it does we will make the most of what is left. Rose and I laundromatted, aperitivo’d, lunched and went to the Torture Museum for the rest of our day. We’re now resting before we aperitivo again and then decide what to do for dinner. A happy Mumma for another few days!!

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Tuscan days

The days are just flying by and as a consequence no emails have been forthcoming from me. So this is a catch up.
Sunday: Exactly as planned. A day of grazing. It was crazy…we couldn’t eat all the food for lunch so had to extend the meal into dinner. Antipasto platter consisting of cheeses, prosciutto, salami, bruscetta, etc…so delicious, all the produce of this wonderful food oriented country. Then the primi piatti which was a delicious pumpkin ravioli with a gorgonzola sauce. We then went out for a bit of a walk in the afternoon. The streets were full and bustling. Then home to cook up a chicken with garlic, oil and lemon. For desert we had bought a delicious custard/cream and strawberry pie and a torte di limone…just superb. This was all washed down with Aperol Spritz’s, beer, wine by the tonne and finished with Arancello and (for Hammy only) Grappa. Talk about a feast day.

Monday: A public holiday in Italy and we set off for the Giardino dei Tarocchi which is a sculpture park I had been told to go to. It is south of Lucca and near the coast. We naively thought this would be a lovely little excursion with a fish lunch by the seaside. So off we set. As it turns out so did every other Italian family in the whole bloody country. Our lunch by the seaside turned into a bit of a fiasco with not a single table to be found anywhere and the streets of our lovely little seaside town jam packed full. We eventually found a place where we could get takeaway and sat on a street bench with hamburgers, seafood lasagna, beer and wine. Sunny but cold!! Eventually we got to Giardino dei Tarocchi and had to fight our way into the carpark and then stand in a queue, absolutely freezing our butts off, for an hour to get into the place. It is a great park, similar to the Gaudi Park in Barcelona, with wonderful, colourful and bizarre sculptures to look at and climb into. Would have been wonderful with less people around. We finally got home around 10pm due to awful traffic. Cooked up some leftovers for tea and went to bed exhausted.

Tuesday: Off for a drive through the Chianti Region and to take in San Gimignano and Siena. Although still cold the sun was shining and it was a gorgeous day. So lovely driving through the Tuscan countryside through the typical rolling, vine and olive tree covered hills. We went first of all to San Gimignano. It is a really beautiful town as everyone probably knows, wonderfully preserved, antiquated twisting, tumbling and climbing streets, with towers and churches adding to the atmosphere. We went to an absolutely superb place for lunch that we had read about and were lucky enough to get there in time to get a table. Many were not so lucky. We had a superb meal and a lovely chianti. We wondered through the town some more, had a heavenly gelati and then headed off for Siena. Again driving through the beautiful countryside. Siena is lovely. I have been there in the last couple of months so I planted myself in Italy’s most beautiful Piazza (Del Campo), found a spot in the sun and sat there while the others went off to the Duomo. We wondered around the town and then headed off for home. The trip home was the drive from hell. We’re not sure what had happened but there was a massive blockage of traffic. So much so that cars were driving off the on-ramp to get away from it and we all made Hammy do the same. He was very brave…this would NOT be something you would do in Australia!! Anyway we kept hitting blocked traffic and exiting very cleverly to get around it all. When we hit Lucca we went straight out for a meal in a cheap and very cheerful ristorante which was fun. Then again late home and into bed.

Wednesday:….finally catching up, I’m now up to today. This morning it was off to Pisa. Saw the tower…tick(didn’t climb it though), saw the battistero…tick. and the campanile…tick. All really nice but the really nice thing was when we’d seen everything we had to see and went off walking in the town. It is a lovely town and I had never really explored the town before. I’d been into the main tourist area but what I loved today was that we got away from there and found to our delight a wonderful town. We went down to the Arno River and honestly you wouldn’t know whether you were in Pisa or Firenze they are so similar along the river. Again we found a place for lunch but this time not as successfully as in San Gimignano. Hammy was determined to have a pizza but unfortunately the place we found was mediocre at best. Still nice sitting out in the sun.

Then we came back here. Before coming back to the apartment we went for a walk along Lucca’s wall for a way just to soak it up in the sunshine. It is just glorious when the sun shines, it really is. Ham and Ariane have now gone off to do some laundry at the Laundromat and tonight we are going to a restaurant North of Lucca recommended by Chris to eat game!!