Tuscany

I just returned from a one week vacation in Tuscany and it was just great. Food is great, people are nice and weather is gorgeous.

So, one by one…. I had some of the greatest food ever. They have excellent restaurants serving fancy meals at very attractive prices. When I say attractive it means that in Paris, for example, you’d pay twice or three times the money for the same quality.

Italians has four types of dishes: antipasti, “primi piatti”, “secondi piatti” and desert. Antipasti are appetizers, “primi piati” constitute the first course and “secondi piatti” the main dish. One thing you should be aware of is that meats don’t generally have a side dish, you’ll have to order that apart. Typical side dishes are mixed grilled vegetables, spinach or pasta.

The service is generally great and the bill was always accurate. I mention this because friends with whom I traveled confirmed horror stories I heard about overcharged restaurant bills in Rome, with deserts and drinks that had never been ordered being systematically added to your bill. No such thing in Tuscany. We’ve been to restaurants in Pisa, Florence, Sienna, San Gimignano, Lucca and also to Ravena and never had a restaurant bill problem.

Driving in Tuscany is not such a bad experience as you’d expect. Roads and highways are of lesser quality than what you’d find in France or Germany but still good and drivers are surprisingly respectful of speed limits. Tuscany, however, it still Italy and there is a certain level of chaos in the way these people drive, especially in larger cities such as Florence and Pisa. Here are a few unusual situations I have encountered while driving:

• going full speed on the highway from Pisa to Florence. All of a sudden the traffic jams. Wonder why? Two cars were stopped on the left – that’s inner – lane, probably because of an accident. Drivers were standing on the highway, yelling at each other.
• bicycles and pedestrians arriving in front of you, against traffic, on your lane is not an unusual thing. You’ll freak out the first couple of times but you’ll get used to it
• small villages don’t have sidewalks and roads bending sharply around buildings provide for a lot blind corners. So beware of pedestrians walking in the middle of the street – can’t really blame them, since there’s no sidewalk – or even better, cars parked in the street

We stayed at something called “Agriturismo”, which is some sort of an inn. Actually it was a house with three isolated apartments and a swimming pool. Our apartment was a two bedroom, living room and fully equipped kitchen. Everything looked spotless and brand new. If that would have been a hotel suite in NYC or Paris, you would have payed a fortune for it. We only payed less than 600 EUR for four, for a week.

The only problem we had in Tuscany was flying out of Pisa. Not the flight itself, but check-in and boarding part. If something could have gone bad, it did. But there will be a special post about that.