Firenze Trip – Getting Abroad

Continued from: Firenze Trip – Getting Fed

We took two trips out of the city during our stay.  On Friday afternoon, we took a wine tour to the small town of San Gimignano.  On the way we learned many important facts about Chianti wine from our tour guide, the most important being that we should only buy Chianti with a seal bearing the initials DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) guaranteeing that the wine is of the highest quality having been produced following the strict laws and having passed DNA testing to ensure the correct grape varieties and quantities have been used.

The first winery we visited was a small operation where we got to see their barrel aging area before trying their wines which were mostly white wines which my wife and I don’t really like.

They began to produce wines in 1974, so it was a fairly new operation, only 50 years old.

The second winery we visited was much larger and if you zoom in on the photo above you will see that it started operation in 1720 and has been run as a family business ever since.  The family member who conducted our wine tasting provided the most entertaining experience we have ever had in all the wineries we have ever visited.  He was extremely knowledgeable, personable and funny.

After trying the three wines that had been set on the table, he came out with what he referred to as his “baby” and offered us a taste of it.  It is a blend of three different grapes and because the three are not available each year, it cannot be produced every year.  After a taste, I knew I had to buy a bottle which we took back to our hotel to enjoy one evening.

The other side trip we took was to Siena at the very center of the Tuscany region.  We had planned to take the train there, but our concierge encouraged us to take a bus instead as the train station was on the outskirts of Siena and the bus dropped us off at almost the center of the city.  Considering Siena is a very hilly city, this was a wise decision.

Here we also used a Rick Steves city walk.  His tour started at Il Campo in front of the City Hall and the surrounding piazza where we learned of the annual horse race that has been going on for almost 400 years which is attended by as many as 60,000 race fans.  It’s a race not for money but for the honor of the neighborhoods and involves three laps around the square.  It lasts but 90 seconds and the victorious neighborhood enjoys bragging rights until the next year.

Leaving the piazza, as we walked mostly uphill, we learned many more things about Siena which was founded as an Etruscan settlement in 900 to 400 BCE but enjoyed its heyday in the 1200s to 1300s.  The highest point in the city is occupied by another Duomo, the Cathedral of Siena.  Rick’s tour not only covers the exterior of the building but the interior as well where saw even more Renaissance masterpieces.

Something else we learned through Rick’s walking tours that we did not know was that Florence and Siena were fierce rivals for centuries which included military battles on multiple occasions.  Beyond military actions, they also competed for prestige and during Siena’s golden age in the early 1300s, they decided to expand their cathedral to make it larger than the Duomo in Florence.  But those plans ended in disaster—the Black Death (bubonic plague)—in 1348.  Siena lost over 35% of its residents, and it never recovered.  Today, we can still see the unfinished walls of the expansion that was completed.

If you look closely, you can barely see the heads of two people atop that wall.  Climbing up through a narrow stone spiral staircase, you get some of the best views of the city.  But it is not for the faint of heart.

I found my legs nervously shaking a bit on the narrow walkway due to its sheer height.

Our Siena walking tour ended at this spot which houses the oldest bank in the world, having been in continuous operation for over 500 years.

A few other highlights of our trip to Florence included a visit to the oldest pharmacy in the world.

And of course, shopping for souvenirs for our grandchildren as well as ourselves.

On one sunny afternoon, we took in the Boboli Gardens situated behind the Pitti Palace and previously the private garden of the powerful Medici family.  The garden is huge taking between three and four hours to see everything.  It also offered stunning views of the city…

… as well as sculptures throughout the garden.  In fact, one I was amazed to see had been carved in 50 AD.

And speaking of old, that was one thing that continued to amaze us as just how old everything was.

Our flights home were a little less stressful than our outbound ones but again we had issues in Paris. Our plane was not parked at a jetway but out on the field.  We had to take buses to our plane and the buses were late.  In fact, the bus to take the flight crew did not even arrive to pick them up until well after the boarding process should have started.

We ended up leaving over 30 minutes late and I told my wife never again would we fly through Paris.  I had an eerie feeling as we taxied past a ¼ scale replica of the Concorde.  You may recall it was from Charles de Gaulle airport that the Air France Concorde left catching fire on takeoff and crashing nearby ending the age of supersonic flight.

Thankfully our flight was uneventful, and we even made up the lost time passing over Greenland on our way back to the US.

Overall, it was a great trip, and I would encourage anyone wanting to travel to Italy to be sure and include Florence and Siena in your itinerary.

Cheers!