Beautiful Fiesole and Chianti Country

FIESOLE
If you've ever read any of Frances Mayes' books such as "Under The Tuscan Sun", you've heard mention of Fiesole.  It's in the hills surrounding Florence and where the rich go for the summer when the heat in the city gets oppressive.  Well, we wanted to see some greenery and some Roman ruins, so off we went on Thursday by city bus up to Fiesole.  It was a lovely ride up winding roads until we reached the top of the hill.  It took about a half hour and was an incredible ride.  The bus made very few stops and it was obvious that almost everyone on the bus had the same destination in mind.  When we got off the bus we were in the main square of town and right in front of a statue of Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, the two credited with unifying Italy, on horseback.

Next lunch was in order.  There were 3 outdoor restaurants to choose from and we chose the one with plaid tablecloths.  No reason why.....we just liked the tablecloths.  Paid off, too, as lunch was really good as you can see below.

Salads, pizza and pasta dishes seem to be normal fare at almost every trattoria.  Believe it or not, this was a single serving pizza.  We shared both it and the salad.....with ham, of course.

After lunch it was time to venture into the area that housed a museum of Etruscan and Roman ruins and the grounds of the old Roman theater and baths.  The amphitheater used to seat over 3000 people
around  First Century BC.

I sat while Ken looked over the whole area.  Too many steps for my bum knee, but I got to see plenty.

The views from north (towards the mountains) there were pretty fanastic.

Unfortunately, the views back over Florence were quite hazy, so they don't do justice to what's to be seen.

In addition to the theater, the Romans had built what seemed to me to be a pretty sophisticated bath there - indoor and outdoor swimming pools and hot, warm, and cool soaking pools!

The Romans had built all this over an older Etruscan site, which included a temple, and lots of students out sketching.

Afterwards we went into the museum to see room after room of incredible artifacts from the Etruscans, Romans, Greeks, even Lombards (~AD 600) who had used the area as a burial ground.  One interesting Roman necklace was for men to show that they were fertile.  Apparently with all the lead piping in Rome, this wasn't just boastful trash talk.  A good stud was hard to find!

....and of course proof that we were really there.

A DRIVE THROUGH CHIANTI COUNTRY
As beautiful as Florence is, there are very few trees or greenery in the historic city center.  Most of the vegetation you see is on windowsills.  So on Friday we rented a car, stick shift, of course, and set off with our hearts in our mouths, and Ken bravely at the wheel.  He had done his homework, so he knew what the different signs meant.  Italy has a few driving rules all of their own.  Stop signs, for instance, are mere suggestions.  Maybe stop, maybe no......you decide.  Motorcyclists have no rules other than to see if they can weave at least five times on any given road.  If you don't have at least one hair-raising experience with a motorcycle on any given trip, you must not have been driving.  The street may be one-way as marked.  Then again, maybe only part of it is.  After all, you should be able to figure it out without signs.  Knowing all this Ken decided to rent a Hertz little blue Fiat anyway and off to Chianti country we went.  It was a lovely day in the 70s.  

Navigating the roads was actually less difficult than expected.  We rented a GPS, but it was useless since we didn't know how to program it for destinations we wanted.  However, the roads were quite well marked with the names of towns and routes numbers, so prior route planning with the help of Google and a local map made it quite do-able, with only a few anxious moments at the start.

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Just one of the castles we passed while traveling up to Greve, a town noted for its Chianti wine. 

Another little scenic sight.  The rows of vegetation could be grape vines.  The other big ticket produce item was olive oil and olive trees were in abundance.  They won't fruit for a few more months, but neither of us have seen an olive tree up close before.  They aren't planted with the same precision as grape vines, but lovely to see with their silvery green leaves. 


Other than wine, the principal claim to fame of Greve is that it was the birthplace of Verranzano, the explorer.  So naturally he gets the place of honor in the town piazza.

We had an interesting lunch in the town square.  While I had a baccala (dry reconstituted salt cod) dish with white beans and tomato sauce, Ken had a wide noodle with wild boar sauce.  Both were quite good. 

Greve, however, was a bit of a disappointment.  The wine tasting required buying a card so that we could pay for our different tastes of Chianti.  Olive oil tasting was free.  Then we tried to go to the COOP, a major grocery chain for stuff like Kleenex and it was closed for lunch.  (Many stores close from 2PM to 4PM daily for lunch)  So we went on to the church in town that was noted in our travel books.  Only problem was it was closed, too, for cleaning.  It had crossed mops at the door.  So we got into our little Fiat and headed towards Castellina.  By the time we got there, their COOP was open and I got the best cut of beef for braciole (thinly sliced beef stuffed with pine nuts, raisins, parsley, lard, garlic and tied into little rolls) cooked in tomato sauce.  I watched the butcher get it as thin as I've ever seen and he didn't use a slicer.  He also gave me some string so that I could tie my little rolls.  Ken decided to explore the town a bit and found it much more to his liking than Greve. 


Castellina was a beautiful walled town on the top of a hill, surrounded by steep hills very reminiscent of Kentucky, or other parts of Appalachia (the resemblance ends there, Chianti region is pretty well off and intensely cultivated for grapes and olives). The historic district was much like Florence's - everything paved, little green and buildings tightly packed.

An interesting feature of the town was that a walkway had been fashioned beneath (or in) the town walls that you could walk along, catch views of the surrounding country out of windows, and even pass stores there.

Entrance to the walkway

The walkway

A view out a window

By this time it was getting late and we had to get our car back by 7 PM.  So we headed off through more stunning countryside to the main, four-lane highway from Siena to Florence, filled up our tank outside Florence (they were going to charge us about 100 euros if we didn't!) and made it back with 15 minutes to spare.

For the musically inclined, I've included this final shot on the ramp-way of the garage where we turned in our car.  That word "adagio" (translated for you in the photo) is a real life Italian word, not just music mumbo-jumbo.

P.S. to the blog on Wednesday about smoking in Italy.  A lot of young people smoke and almost all of them seem to roll their own.  In American whenever I see someone rolling a cigarette I immediately think it's Wacky Tobacci (marijuana).  In Italy it all seems legal tobacco being rolled into a cigarette.