Tag Archives: Italian

Tuscany in three and a half days

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Arch in Monteriggioni overlooking Tuscan countryside

Gentle readers, you may have noticed a brief pause in posts to toscanakiwi.  We have had visitors from home staying at our place and have taken the last few days to show them some of Tuscany.

We have revisited some places we went with others and explored some places that are new.  Old favourites like San Gimignano have impressed and new places like Monteriggioni have surprised.

Autumn is an ideal time to sightsee as the days are still warm, but not too hot. In summer you sit in the shade at cafes avoiding the sun, but in Autumn you sit in the sun and savour the last of the good weather.

Pictures and stories of our travels will be added over the next few days.

For sale – requires some work, excellent DIY project

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Just up the road from us there is a villa (well what was once a villa) which commands a great view of the area and, in it’s day would have been a grand place to live.

It has an internal courtyard and part of a roof.  As with many old villas it has no real foundations so would require a rebuild from the ground up.  But, given the laws around older villas, you couldn’t change the design during the renovation – or even add in any doors or windows that aren’t already part of the structure.

This type of property, as is, on a couple of acres of land around here – about €500k.  Any takers?

I Mondiali di Rugby – going nero

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It’s the business end of the Rugby World Cup and, even in this distant corner of Tuscany, we are feeling the excitement. And we’ll be up early again this coming weekend and heading into Siena to watch the quarter finals and support the All Blacks.

To show our support for the All Blacks, for the next two weeks Toscanakiwi is going black. Well parts of it anyway.

Go the All Blacks.

Last of the summer wine

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As summer turns to autumn, every week there are less and less visitors staying at our place. The days are still fine, sunny and hot – unusual weather the locals say.

From the height of the season when there would be kids, adults and inflatable toys everywhere around the pool, today there was just us. Bliss.

Washday in Siena

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Despite all the advances in the modern home, some things are still best done in the old way.

Clearly very few apartments in Siena have dryers so Saturday mornings the streets are lined with laundry.

Given this washing is hanging over a major road out of Siena I guess nothing says clean and fresh like the lingering odour of “Eau de Two Stroke”.

The terror of a hairdresser who speaks no English

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It’s one of those things that needs to be done – haircuts in foreign languages. It’s simple for a guy – you nip into Siena, find someone who cuts hair, gesture for a bit off the sides and a bit less off the top, “grazie mille” and you’re gone.

For girls it’s a bit different. Particularly if colour is involved and the way you’re going to look for the next month or two is at stake.

Jean faced this situation recently and with some trepidation entered the small salon we pass on the way to language school to make an appointment. The hairdresser, a young Italian guy, spoke no real english but was helpful and seemed to know what needed to be done. All good so far.

New hair and new sandals as well

As the appointment was made to follow one of the All Black RWC games, Jean left me sitting having a quiet, post game drink (not to be confused with the pre game drinks or the inter game drinks) and estimated, based on past experience, that the whole operation would take about 90 minutes. She would text me when things were getting close.

No problems, I’d just sit and watch the world go by. Maybe do a little window shopping. Maybe not. “Anchi birra per favoure”.

Ninety minutes later – no text. Two hours – no text. Two hours and 20 mins – no text. To put it another way – that’s about 8 beers and, needless to say, by this stage I was feeling pretty good about life. My main concern, in fact my only concern, was whether or not I would be able to stand up.

To test this, a walk to the salon was in order to check Jean hasn’t been abducted, murdered, or worse, things have gone horribly wrong and she’s sitting there with red or green hair or even worse, no hair.

As I stagger through the door Jean seems calm and relaxed and, more importantly still has hair. The process is progressing but progressing very slowly. The hairdresser is a perfectionist – no an artist and it seems I have another 40 minutes to fill. I wonder how I”ll do that?

Fourty minutes later all is well, Jean looks great, every single hair is in place and perfectly cut, dried and styled. Just the look to be dragging a drunk through the streets of Siena on the way home.

A trip through the Chianti hills

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Yesterday we went for a drive to Castellina in Chianti.  We have been there a number of times, both with others and by ourselves over the last few months, but this time we abandoned the autostrade for the backroads.

The trip from Siena to Castellina is a winding road through the lower slopes of the Chianti hills which then climbs up towards Castellina.

Everywhere you look there are classic Italian scences – even when you take a break to let Daisy the dog have a comfort stop.  “Good girl Daisy” and you turn around and this is the view.

The book of the blog

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As a WordPress blogger I receive a stream of emails about changes and improvements to the way WordPress works. The vast majority receive a cursory glance and are consigned to the trash.

One that arrived recently caught my attention. A company based in Germany called Feedfabrik could take any WordPress blog and make it into a book – both as a hard copy printed book and a soft copy PDF.

Given we had just reached 100 posts it seemed only sensible to make use of this offer. To that end, for those of you interested, below is a PDF booklet of the first 100 Toscanakiwi posts. The file size is 7.3Mb.

It is best viewed with the page setting “2 Up” in Acrobat.

Toscanakiwi – The First 100

Lunch at L’Osteria del Bigelli

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The lovely people who own the property we are staying at have gone out of their way to make us welcome, everything from dropping off fresh fruit collected from some of the fruit trees around the grounds to clearing trees to improve our view of Siena when we were away in Positano.

Last week they recommened a restaurant in Siena that they said served very good, very authentic Tuscan food. The restaurant is called L’Osteria del Bigelli and is siutated in the Campo in Siena.

We were a little sceptical as the standard of food in the Campo, with a limited number of exceptions, is quite poor and aimed more at speedy delivery to tourists so the restaurants can turn tables quickly rather than any real culinery excellence for more discerning customers – or even for us.

Following the rugby on Saturday morning we decided to try it out. The fact that is located next to La Birreria where we watch the Rugby World Cup matches made the decision even easier.

The restaurant consists of about 12 outside tables squeezed under large umbrellas to protect from the sun and 4 tables inside which, given the weather currently, remained empty while we were there.

We were very pleasantly surprised from the start. Jean had ravioli with cherry tomatoes and I had herb encrusted lamb with spinach. The food looked great, smelt great and tasted great. The lamb was so good I was concerned a South Island farmer wearing stubbies and a floppy hat was going to appear beside the table at any moment and say “I’ll take that mate” and walk off into the distance with it.

Washed down with a glass or two of vino the meal was superb. All up lunch cost just over €50 or about $NZ85 which is quite reasonable.

The verdict – a great recommendation, we will visit L’Osteria del Bigelli again soon.

Toscanakiwi hits 100

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Yesterday marked a milestone for Toscanakiwi with our 100th post. Given we’ve been away from New Zealand since the start of April which means something has been posted roughly (very roughly) every 1.6 days.

Part of the package from WordPress, the people who host the blog, are statistics about how many people read each post each day and total visits to the blog every day, week and month. Since starting the blog we have had over 4,800 visits or an average of 30 per day. Through August and September the average has risen to around 40 per day and over a week we regularly get anywhere from 200 to 500 visits.

So as we pass the 100th post, we want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read our ramblings and share in our Italian adventure. It means a lot to us to know that the folks at home – and all around the world based on the country visitor stats – are interested in the odd things we get up to and the fun and games that go with living in Italy.

Through watching the statistics one thing has become clear – the publishing mantra that “content is king”. Our content is based on what tends to happen around us on a daily basis, but if there is anything our lovely readers would specifically like us to do, talk about, talk about more or explore, please let us know. In fact, you can leave suggestions on this post if you wish.

Once again, thank you all for your support over the last few months and we hope you will continue to visit in the future as we continue our Italian adventure.

Ciao

Graeme and Jean

What’s with the weather?

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According to the annual temperature statistics for Siena, right now the temperature should be around 20C.  Obviously no one has told the climate this and yesterday, according to my iPhone weather app, the temperature by the pool at 4:33pm was a healthy 32C.

You never know what you’re going to see next around our place

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Sunday was a glorious morning. Mist surrounded our place early in the morning and as it cleared we became aware of the sounds of the local hunt doing their thing across the valley.  It felt like we had been transported to England.

Post hunt relaxation

Fox hunting was, in fact, introduced into Italy around 1850 by the english and is popular in both Lazio and Tuscany.  These days they chase a scent rather than a fox but that certainly didn’t, from what we could see, dampen the enthusiasm of the participants.

I wonder what “tally ho” is in Italian?

I Mondiali di Rugby

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As with many things before, we thought we had a plan for the RWC opening. We had located a Heineken RWC bar in Siena. Through the usual mix of English, Italian and sign language we gleened that it had Sky TV and would be playing the matches.

Given the time difference, the opening ceremony was due to start at 9:30am local time with the first match at 10:30am. That meant heading to Siena at 9am – and being up around 7:30am.

Now this, in itself, was a major challenge as our place doesn’t really stir until around 10am on any given day. (Correction, I don’t stir until around 10am. Jean is up and active much, much earlier.)

We arrived at the bar promptly at 9:30am (wearing our RWC/NZ t-shirts) to find it shut, closed, the exact opposite of open. This was, to say the least, a disappointment. Our plan was in tatters.

We retired to one of the bars that ring the Campo in Siena to regroup and replan. We noticed as we sat down outside the bar – on a beautiful Siena morning – that they had a TV playing behind the counter. It was tuned to an Italian news channel – but it was a Sky TV channel. Could they change it to the right sport channel? Would they?

As with many situations in Italy, our simple request was taken very seriously. A newspaper was obtained and the TV listings checked to find the right channel – 204. The very helpful waitress then disappeared for a few minutes. We waited. The TV channel didn’t change. We waited.

When she returned, she explained that they had opened the other half of the bar and tuned the TV’s in there to the right channel. She showed us to a table, made sure everything was ok and checked if we wanted anything to drink.

She was thinking Cappuccino and was a little surpised when we ordered beer and wine (nothing like that first Heineken at 9:35 in the morning).

It was quite surreal to see New Zealand and the opening ceremony on TV when the view out through the door of the bar was Siena’s Campo. The Sienese opinion of the opening ceremony – very cool.

The game? Not a bad start, but there’s still work to do. Go the ABs!

A post for all lovers of vintage Italian speedboats

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It’s not often we delve into specialist areas in this blog but this post is about Riva’s Aquarama – the classic Italian speedboats of the 60s and 70s.

They defined style and cool from their launch in the early sixties and were often referred to as the Ferrari of speedboats.  In all only 768 were built between 1962 and 1996 when production stopped.

The originals now sell for hundreds of thousands of Euros, however we spotted these models in a shop window in Positano.  At €600 each they seem a real bargain.  Any takers?