Arrivederci Toscana!

We're off to Rome today! Sadly, our time in Tuscany has come to an end and what a time we have had here! Everything under the Tuscan sun was everything I thought it would be and more. What I will remember most is getting stuck in the middle of a vineyard, being towed out by a tractor, the wonderful winding roads that lead to some of the most beautiful views I've ever seen, the 600+ miles we drove over the 9 days to get to the views, laying in the grass reading Edith Wharton and smelling the sweet smell of our villa's roses mixed with the mint growing wild amongst the grass, cooking in our little kitchen that brought back memories of cooking in the cabin in Colorado, and most importantly the wonderful people we met along the way. The only thing we didn't see were those giant Tuscan sunflowers, but that's okay, I think it was a little too early in the season. We do have them at home but missing them gives us a reason to come back.

Due to time (and to avoid posting too many unnecessary pictures that could become a bore) below are only a few highlights from the events of Friday through Sunday. On Friday we drove to the ocean, on Saturday we went back to Florence and on Sunday we relaxed and then cooked ourselves a feast.

Arrivederci Toscana!

(Note: The posts from Rome may be fewer, shorter and maybe a little further between. I've found that there's less time to post when in the city since every day is packed with sightseeing, but I'll do my best to show you everything.)

Forte dei Marmi is a resort town in the province of Lucca, located about an hour and twenty minutes northwest of
where we are in Tuscany.

In Italian Forte dei Marmi means "Fort of the marbles". The town takes its name from the fortress that rises in the middle of the main square, built under Grand Duke Peter Leopold, who was to become Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1788.

The population of the town, amounting to some 7,700, nearly triples during the summer,  due to tourists who mainly come from Florence, Milan, Germany, and Russia. Obviously we're still in the off-season but during the
high season the place is probably similar to Palm Beach.

The summer crowd hadn't arrived yet, but the hydrangeas were sure in full bloom...

...as were the Bottle Brush plants.

We took the bus back into Florence (which amazingly took about 20 minutes from the villa) just to see
the Pitti Palace and it's Bobboli Gardens. The core of the present palace dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker. The palace was then bought by the Medici family in 1549. It grew as a great treasure house as later generations amassed paintings, plates, jewelry and luxurious possessions.

In the late 18th century, it was used as a power base by Napoleon, and later served for a brief period as the principal royal palace of the newly united Italy. The palace and its contents were donated to the Italian people by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1919, and its doors were opened to the public as one of Florence's largest art galleries. Today, it houses several minor collections in addition to those of the Medici family, and is fully open to the public.

Behind the palace are the Boboli Gardens -- the amphitheater.
The gardens are some of the first and most familiar formal 16th century Italian gardens. The mid-16th century garden style, as it was developed here, incorporated longer axial developments, wide gravel avenues, a considerable "built" element of stone, the lavish employment of statuary and fountains, and a proliferation of detail, coordinated in semi-private and public spaces that were informed by classical accents: grottos, nympheums, garden temples and the like. The openness of the garden, with an expansive view of the city, was unconventional for its time.

The Boboli Gardens were laid out for Eleonora di Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I de' Medici....
not bad for a backyard.

Who has a whole garden of peonies!?
The porcelain collection is also housed here.

 No idea who the artist is or what it's depicting but thought it was pretty dramatic.

I bed a Medici posed in a very similar way in front of this vast holding of palace.

It was just our luck that the Florence Gelato Festival was going on...
gelato at un-inflated tourist prices! Yes!

We also finally found some art that wasn't Renaissance or religious...finally.

Since no place opens for dinner until 7:30 (at the earliest) we settled into the Verrazano wine bar
(yes, part of the castle and winery visited a couple of days ago by the same name). Rich discussed NY sports
teams with the Bostonian waiter and I analyzed this plate of deliciousness in order to replicate it at home.
Rich is actually trying to make a reservation on the phone...but let's take a close look at the phone shall we?

Does the King of Electronics actually have a device that won't hold a charge?? And has to be connected to
a very unattractive battery pack??

Always connected...
and the phone actually works great, the battery just can't handle the excessive use of the navigation and maps,
but the Italian SIM card we bought allows us to calls and make our own hotspots when free WiFi isn't available.

I'm only highlighting our dinner in Florence because of the cheese.
It was a soft mozzarella made in the south of Italy. This was paired with sauteed spinach. Amazing.
We found this rather modern, quietly trendy but incredibly affordable place after walking
for about an hour, far from the tourists and way beyond the borders of the tourist eateries.

Last day in Tuscany!

We had big plans for our Tuscan feast...huge steaks, pasta, veggies...but this fire and it's coals didn't last long,
so we ended up having to pan fry them inside. We're blaming it on the Italian charcoal.

Eleanor's Meat and Cheese Platter
Prosciutto with melon, parmesan, salami and aged goat cheese...
the goat cheese isn't Italian and Rich has been hauling two huge blocks of it in his bag since Amsterdam...
yes, it's that good.

Just like we used to do in Colorado -- get rid of everything in fridge the last night by making dinner out of it.
We had the best time in our little Tuscan apartment, mainly because it was like the cabin in Rico,
which was the best vacation house ever!