Everyone Goes to Florence, Italy · Jan 19, 11:43 AM by James Martin
Who cares that Italy is going broke? Who cares that the economy everywhere that isn’t China or Germany is in the toilet? Folks like you and I have been hiding out in Florence hotels at a rate greater than ever before.
12 million hotel rooms in Florence province were filled with tourists and their spawn last year, according to The Florentine. Up over 8% from the year before. The city’s hotels did quite well, too. Over 8 million people slept in them. Or at least paid for them (dearly).
Perhaps tourism can save Italy. Of course, for that, there’d have to be a weak Euro, or better yet, a feeble Lira. Not only that, but every destination would have to be as popular as Florence.
It’s true that you can’t find as much art crammed into as small an area as the city that calls itself “Firenze.” But if you have a car and don’t mind narrow, curving roads there sure is a lot to discover in the rest of Tuscany. For real contrast, you could go up to little Sant Anna di Stazemma and find out about the massacre and what Spike Lee was trying to convey. If that’s too rural and remote, you could visit one of Italy’s most beautiful hill towns, Pitigliano, also spectacular in its setting. Heck, I’d stay a while and walk the Vie Cave, the Etruscan rock sculpted paths.
But enough. Yes, there’s art in Florence. But if you want to know a bit about the world, from the plight of Jews in Pitigliano to the plight of the resistance in Sant Anna, to the world of artisan cheese making, you’ll find it all within the friendly confines of Tuscany.
So spread out. Together we can stimulate the economy of Italy to make sure it lasts for a while without folks being forced to sell off ancient artifacts or pickpocket every last tourist.
But then, if you must go to Florence, we have Florence Weather and Climate Information just a mouse click away.
But you know, this is Italy, and even in Tuscany there are exotic islands awaiting your bags. Heck, you might think of renting a vacation house on Giglio and watching the cruise ships waddle by. Or maybe not. Still:
Giglio Island Vacation Rentals
Everyone Goes to Florence, Italy originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jan 19, 2012, © James Martin, 
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Ligurian Floods: How to Help · Nov 5, 07:26 AM by James Martin
Just as the Cinque Terre had started to dig out of the mess the last heavy rains had left, now a new set of storms has begun to batter Genoa and other nearby areas, including the Val di Vara.
In the Lunigiana region of Tuscany, Equi Terme, a spa town, is getting pounded with rain as I type.
To get an idea of the amount of water we’re talking about here, and the tenacity of Italian bus drivers as they float down the streets, you need to see Simone Lupi’s video
Again, people have died in this latest disaster: Six killed, others missing in latest Liguria storm
How can you help? The Italian Red Cross has set up an English language page to accept your donations for the flooding in Tuscany and Liguria via credit card or Pay Pal. It’s in English: Croce Rossa Italia donations
For history of flooding in Liguria and video of the flooding in the Cinque Terre and the Italian Riviera, see: Devastating, Lethal Floods in Cinque Terre
To see where Liguria is located, see the Map of Liguria
Ligurian Floods: How to Help originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Nov 05, 2011, © James Martin,
Fancy Pants Pictures from Tuscany · Oct 19, 04:52 PM by James Martin
You see thousands of travel pictures taken by all kinds of folks posted on the net. Usually the ones you look at are from your own country due to language issues. Thus, just a little, they probably share a tiny bit of your worldview. They’re purty, but you’ve been there and done that.
I have to say I was surprised when one of my close Italian neighbors, the master Italian gardener Enrico’s wife Isa, sent me notice of her slide show. Now, folks are often bowled over when I tell them I know more about my Italian neighbors than about my neighbors in California, but I do. Still, I was blown away by the quality of Isa’s photography. So, I thought you’d like to know where a Lunigiana couple goes on a “close” vacation, and what they think is important enough to photograph. So, here:
Now, was that artistic or not?
Fancy Pants Pictures from Tuscany originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Oct 19, 2011, © James Martin,
Popular These Days
Tuscan Barnyard Fry · Oct 16, 09:43 AM by James Martin
I don’t know what made me think of this. Perhaps it was a conversation with my mother who lives in rural Illinois, where you can’t get butter in a restaurant and have to settle for some chemical glop called “Shedd’s Spread” because, you know, butter has fat and that nasty thing in it that patches cracked arterial walls called cholesterol—and then (surprise!) everything else on the menu is deep fat fried. Tradition. You can’t beat it.
But if you are yearning for fried and happen to find yourself in Tuscany, you need to try the Barnyard fry called “fritto dell’aia” on menus.
You get all the stuff my Italian neighbors have in their backyards: chicken, rabbit, and vegetables, fried up in a crisp shell that keeps all the juices in so they can escape and run down your arms after you pick up a piece and apply your incisors to it.
Below is a picture of a good one. Its from the Osteria del Vecchio Pazzo, an old olive mill converted into an interesting restaurant outside the walls of Lucca and very close to some interesting Lucca villas worth visiting, especially Villa Reale, Villa Oliva e Villa Grabau. (The room we ate in is shown in the picture on the left.) Precede this dish with some tordelli and you can’t go wrong—and you might not want to eat for a while after, I can tell you!
Tuscan Barnyard Fry originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Oct 16, 2011, © James Martin,
Luminaria di Santa Croce: Lucca in a Different Light · Sep 14, 08:07 AM by James Martin
Photographers seek out and relish a different light. Luminaria di Santa Croce on September 13th, a night in which the “Volto Santo” is paraded around Lucca along medieval streets illuminated entirely with candles, offers tourists and photographers a great chance to see a compelling city in this different light. Not only are there thousands of candles lining doors and windows, attached by workers with an amazing number of “cherry pickers” or boom lifts for such a small town, thousands of people holding candles participate in the procession, singing religious songs while winding through the streets of Lucca, watched by thousands.
I’ll let Martha write about the festival, but the pictures are pretty interesting. Here’s just one of San Michele in Foro in early evening before the procession started:
To see a slideshow that explains the goings-on during the Luminaria in Lucca, see: Luminaria di Santa Croce in Lucca, Italy
Luminaria di Santa Croce: Lucca in a Different Light originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Sep 14, 2011, © James Martin,
Italy in Decay · Aug 31, 09:56 AM by James Martin
Italy in Decay originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Aug 31, 2011, © James Martin,
A Truffled Gnudi Lunch in Arezzo · Jul 21, 06:13 AM by James Martin
Summer is not the ideal time to go around tasting truffles. Summer truffles, like summer oysters from warmer waters (say around New Orleans) often approach tastelessness, even though the charge for them remains high.
But we found Osteria da Luchino in Arezzo, and I couldn’t help myself—and darn if both courses of my lunch didn’t come with a rather generous overcoat of freshly shaved truffles. Check out the “pasta” up there on the right. Click the picture to see it large enough to cause your taste buds to stand at attention. What you’re seeing all hidden in the dense overgrowth of truffles are some gnudi resting on a dollop of pear sauce. Gnudi come from around Arezzo. They’re like ordering ravioli without the pasta part. Ricotta reigns. The menu touts them as “gnudi gratinati al forno con purea di pere e tartufo.” Gnudi could be an extension of yesterday’s discussion of Unusual Primi Piatti
They were good. Need you ask? Just look at them! And the minute the plate got 5 feet away from the table we were immersed in a cloud of sexy truffle odors.
Martha’s Pici acqua e farina al ragu biano di coniglio, eggless pici with a white rabbit sauce, looks rather threadbare, doesn’t it? But the taste! Yes, the pici had absorbed everything a rabbit and its associated vegetables could give. Fantastic!
Ok, so could our secondi piatti live up to the primi? I mean, for me we were talking more truffles, maybe an overdose of truffles, this time drifting over a saddle of roast rabbit wrapped around asparagus stalks. The rabbit was moist. So moist I had to go out and ask the cook how he did it. Did he perhaps wrap the fatless rabbit in a bit of lardo before putting it in the oven to keep it so moist? “No,” he told me. He had cooked it very slowly, “140-150 degrees Centigrade.” Even without the truffles it was some of the best rabbit I’ve ever eaten, and I’ve eaten quite a lot of bunny in my day. But truffles never hurt any dish in my recollection. Heck, stewed sweat socks would taste good if they were heaped in shaved truffles.
Martha’s duck breast crusted in herbs and bread crumbs was also perfectly cooked.
So I’m thinking, “wow, this was a great meal.”
The cost was reasonable. The gnudi with the truffles ran me 13 Euros. Not cheap, but we’re talking truffles that actually had that heady taste that’s often missing from summer truffles. And the rabbit was even cheaper, at 12 Euros. Some folks charge that for rabbit that’s not half as good and lacks the generous dose of truffles.
So when I came home I looked on the web for reviews of Osteria da Luchino. I was baffled. There were as many 1 and 2 star reviews as 4 or five star reviews. Folks didn’t like the service, which when we were there was exemplary. True, the food came out as it came from the kitchen, and that often meant that each of a couple’s plates arrived at a slightly different time, but I can easily live with that.
And yes, the restaurant was full of tourists, including two tables of Italian tourists. (You can always tell because Italian tourists oddly seem to have no knowledge of the pasta shapes or types that exist outside their own region. So when an Italian says something like, “What’s pici?” then you know he’s a “foreigner,” someone who doesn’t live or hasn’t grown up in the area.)
So I’m baffled at the negative reviews, but a day later still nearly ecstatic over my truffle lunch. You don’t get this kinda thing where I come from. And I have no idea what those folks are complaining about. I guess I’ll have to try it again to see if I was imagining great food.
Osteria da Luchino
Via Beccheria 3
Arezzo
A Truffled Gnudi Lunch in Arezzo originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jul 21, 2011, © James Martin,
Nozzano Castello · Jul 10, 08:40 AM by James Martin
Ok, if you look at the picture on the right, you’re maybe thinking, wow, “that’s some tower with that small building on it.” Lots of people have never seen it before. In fact, I couldn’t get anyone on our facebook page to identify it. It’s in Lucca province, and it’s just up the Sercio river east of Massaciuccoli. It’s not so far from Lucca, as a matter of fact.
We came upon the view when we were letting our GPS guide us home from Massaciuccoli after we had taken an excursion to look for a well-signposted hotel. The GPS babe placidly lead us to an intersection when I blurted out, “Look at that!” and made Martha turn the car in the opposite direction, which perturbed the GPS woman no end. Since the last time I’ve had a GPS they’ve made the women who speak sound quite a bit more realistic. So when she muttered, “recalculating” there was a hint of annoyance in her voice, as if you’d wakened her during her pedicure by twisting one of those sticks under her toenails they use to torture you with. Anyway, we made it into town and there it was in front of us: Nozzano Castello, a walled hill town with a castle whose keep couldn’t be visited, ever, according to a woman I consulted who happened to be sweeping her terrace (with a great view!) before I interrupted her.
But hold on—perhaps you can. You see there’s a festival called Il Castello Rivive coming up. It’s one of those medieval festivals where people dress up in old-time costumes and you watch them take 7 hours to make things they could have bought from a Chinese sweat shop for half a Euro. Anyway, it’s likely that during the festival you might get into the castle keep. (I’ve read today that all historical sites in Italy have to open to the public at least one day a year.)
On the right you see a clickable picture of the town gate. Nice, eh? Nozzano Castello reminds me of the little Castle and borgo at Lari.
There’s a lot of interesting things the folks on the grand tour never see. Perhaps you should try a vacation rental for a while and see some of the small things.
Nozzano Castello originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jul 10, 2011, © James Martin,