We picked up a car in Firenze and wound our way through the Tuscany villages for the next week. Though it sounds like we saw a lot, we barely scratched the surface. We discovered that there is so much to see in just this one area of Italy, you could spend an entire two month trip here, just going town to town, sampling the local wine and food.
We stayed on a farm, about two kilometers out of San Gimignano. The name is Agriturismo Poggiacolle, a working farm where they make their own olive oil and wine. We were treated to a bottle of each, and managed to smuggle both back into the US. The wine we drank, so it arrived in our stomachs; the oil was in a small bottle, just the same size as a carry-on shampoo, which it “became.”
This was our home base for several days, and we ventured out each day from here, returning each evening to walk into San Gimignano for dinner and to wander the streets, staring up at the towers and enjoying the quiet, mostly tourist free piazzas.
Our favorite place for dinner was the Trattoria Chiribiri, “Open no stop 11 to 11.” We sat on the steps of the church, waiting to get in, and they brought over two glasses of white wine for us. The Cinghiale (wild boar) Pasta was excellent, and the owner and his staff so kind. After they gave us a complimentary dessert and limoncello, I sent a tip into the kitchen for the cook, and the three of them came out and kissed me!
On our driving we did have a few goals:
To find an authentic Italian hill town, back back off the main roads; some small place unvisited by tourists.
To find an obscure mountain that I read one sentence about on an internet travel brochure for a now defunct trekking company.
To visit a few famous wine areas, and buy a bottle or two of some good wine.
Finally, we had seen a photo of a monastery out in the hills, and it looked beautiful. We decided to try to find it.
We managed to do all this and get ripped off by the Roma Gypsies as well, so here, in no particular order are some of the things we did and places we visited.
We stopped in Siena for the afternoon. This is a wonderful town and would make a great two-day stop. The main square, Piazza del Campo, is huge, and made of brick, and people are just sitting and laying all over staring round at the buildings. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as is most every stone and blade of grass in Italy. The main building, the Torre del Mangia, is part of the city hall and was built in the 1300s. At almost 300 feet tall, it does not quite fit when you try to photograph it, and it truly does stand tall over the city. We had a picnic lunch here, and spent the time looking in shops (Gail) or at the people and architecture (me).
But, the next few days Siena became sort of a thorn in my side, as we had to drive past it each day on our way to other places. There is a bypass road that goes around the city so you don’t get stuck in the slow, tourist traffic, but almost every time I got lost somewhere on the bypass, either shooting into the tourist jam, or shooting out the wrong direction of to god-knows-where. I am not sure why I had so much trouble at this one particular place, but I sure did get to practice my Italian cuss words here.
It was just outside Siena where we ran into the Roma (gypsies). They were standing by a van, beside the road. As I passed there was a THUMP! on the roof of our car. I looked in the mirror and saw nothing, so we kept going. Soon, the van of Roma was behind us, tooting their horn and waving madly out of the windows. They kept following us, so I eventually pulled over in a parking lot, where the guy got out and started yelling and gesturing, not in Italian, or maybe in heavily accented???
Eventually I figured out that he said we hit his rear view mirror on our way past his van. I looked, and the mirror was cracked, and there was a small scratch on the back top of the car.
Looking back at it, I don’t see how we could have hit him, considering the scrape did not run the whole length of the car and the mirror was not broken off as it would have been at 90KMH. I think he must have had something like a bean-bag that he threw at our car as we passed. That is in hindsight.
But at the time, I am in a rental car, trying to argue in three languages with a group of angry people, and so I was unsure what to do. He was demanding €300 and at least I could think clearly enough to convince him that all we had was €50.
We eventually went our separate ways.
If this were to happen again, I think I would drive to the nearest town and find the Polizia Locale, and stop there to let them sort it out. I think it was a pretty clever ruse, targeting an obvious tourist car for money. It was a €50 lesson, and just made us more cautious.
We somehow found Monte Voltraio, outside of the city of Volterra. I had been reading about walking in Italy and came across the website of a (now closed) holiday trekking company. They had an itinerary which mentioned walking to Volterra, and one line about hiking over an ancient mountain, seashell fossils lining the path.
I just took note of that one line.
No other information, just that it must be within walking distance (I guessed ten kilometers, maximum) of Volterra. So I had a road map of Tuscany, and we headed towards Volterra, and sure enough the one mountain I picked out on the map looked pretty prominent in real life. We figured out which dirt road led up to the base of the mountain, and we circled up and over the shoulder of it, onto a flat plain behind.
I was figuring there must be some sort of path or hiking trail, since Europe seems to be covered in trails, so we turned around and as I drove back to the shoulder of the mountain, where a restored farmhouse had been turned into a nice B&B, hidden in the trees and brush was a trail sign for Monte Voltraio.
The trail seems like it must see maybe a hundred hikers a year, it is so overgrown. Sure enough, the lower part is lined with grey sandstone, and there are big clam and scallop shell fossils. We continued on another kilometer or three to the top of the hill, which is capped by the ruins of a fortress or castle, with tufa-stone walls still standing, surrounding a town. Down below is a pretty well preserved building called Casale Rocca, and there are great views over the surrounding Val d’Era.
We returned to the trailhead and our car at Villa Palagione, where I picked up a brochure about the area.
This story got a little more interesting when we arrived at Volterra, and walked in the Etruscan tufa-rock arch to the city. Gail looked down at the cobblestone pavement, and there, in the paving stones right under our feet, were the exact same seashell fossils we had just seen on our hike.
So if you are interested in this hike and city, I am going to save you a little time looking for information. You can look here and here to get started.
The name “Tuscany” comes from the Etruscans, the ancient, Pre-Roman people who lived in the area from at least 700BC and perhaps earlier. They used the tufa rock to build, and carved out caves. You can read more here.
Once in Volterra we ate lunch sitting on a wall, overlooking the valley at the Etruscan gate. A couple of American tourists came up while we were eating and tried to ask, in halting Italian and then English if they could please take our photo. It was pretty amusing to watch them gesture with the camera and all, and I realized how I must look to the Italians I meet. Well, they were shocked when I answered them in English, and we all had a great laugh about it. They just thought we looked so “Italian” sitting there, and it was a beautiful scene that they wanted to remember. So we had a good time “looking Italian” as they took our photo.
There is a great bar in Volterra called the Bra Bar. There are hundreds of bras hanging from the ceiling. It is up to you to decide it Gail’s in among them. We walked the streets over to the Roman amphitheatre, and just hung out a while.
We drove up to a town called Colle di Val d’ Elsa, which was a long, narrow city on a hilltop, surrounded by walls. There are winding, covered walkways, like tunnels, and the typical piazzas and duomos. What I remember most about this town was the tremendous thunder and lightning storm that came rolling in, right about the same time the call to mass started up. The thunder, the rolling crash of the bells from every campanile, the lightning, more bells, the dark sky and the wind… it was amazing.
We bought a bottle or two of great wine. It might have been in Radda in Chianti, or perhaps Monteriggioni, Montalcino, Montepulciano or Montefollonico. I do remember that we watched a bride get her photos done at one of these towns. At each place we would park outside the town walls, walk in and explore.
One evening we drove about ten kilometers down a dirt road near our agritourismo, to have a homemade dinner at the Voltrona Agritourismo. We were seated at a long picnic table, on benches next to Cissi and Klaus Östber, a newly married couple on their honeymoon from Scandinavia. We were served huge bowls of pasta, salads, jugs and jugs of homemade red wine, and then for dessert we got a plate of these weird looking rolled things with white good stuffed in them. We all just stared at them, and then because I am willing to try anything, I jumped in… and that is how I had my first ever cannoli.
Well, we sat and ate and talked, and everyone else left. The owners just cleaned up around us, and then they too drifted away, and soon a fox came in from the fields to join us. He just sat there, like a dog, watching us very intently, until we left.
Other towns we drove to were Asciano, Pienza, and Castiglione d’ Orcia. We found a Monastery, or Abby, dedicated to St. Francis. It is called Abbazia Monte Oliveto Maggiore, and you walk into it along wooded paths until suddenly it opens up to the Abby, which has a lot of great frescos and interesting art in the chapel.
We did find the rounded church with the lone cypress tree we had seen in a photo. It is called Sant’ Antimo, and we were there just in time to hear the monks chant their vespers. Later, we sat and drank a glass of wine and just enjoyed the view.
In our search for an “Authentic, Undiscovered Italian Hill Town” we stumbled upon some Round Art Sculpture, high on the plains, then dropped into the town of Larderello.
We had seen this town from a long was off, due to the giant cooling towers around the area. I thought it was a nuclear power plant, but it turns out that Larderello has the second largest geothermal power plant in the world; the first ever built, started in 1913.
It was interesting to drive around it all, and then in the town itself we found a really strange, modern type concrete church, all cold and angles and industrial looking. While we were standing outside, trying to make heads or tails of it, one of the old ladies who had just come out took us by the arm, unlocked the doors and led us in so we could see it.
We did find our “Authentic, Undiscovered Italian Hill Town” about 20KM up, up a winding, narrow road. It is called Libbiano, and there is a little parking area outside the town itself, the streets are narrow and have beautiful colorful homes with the most spectacular view patios, and we saw one café, which was closed for midday.
You could make an entire vacation of just cruising small towns, exploring, eating and drinking your way through Tuscany.