The Life and Travels of Sherckle: Florence, Italy ~ A Day Trip to Tuscany ~ Part One

Many days behind in my posts. Three days in each city is only enough to give us a very brief overview of the treasures each one holds, and the miles & miles of walking between venues leaves us exhausted at night. Sleep takes precedence over downloading pictures & writing the day's blog... :(

When we left our apartment in Venice we caught the crowded water taxi (Vaparetto) for a 20 minute ride to the train station. Maneuvering luggage onto and off a boat that strictly adheres to a time schedule is a feat in and of itself. We watched time after time while here having the docking attendant close the gate before everyone was on or off-board, and even tho we had a couple of hours before the train departed we didn't want to ride the full travel route of this particular Vaparetto.

I've already detailed the high-speed train ride between Venice and Florence in an earlier post but its worth repeating that it was such a pleasure! I am swearing off drinking red wine in these new club car 'digs' however, as I accidentally bumped my glass spilling the drink all over the new carpet. Ugh! Red wine no less! The train attendant told me not to worry about it but there I was hunched on all fours trying to soak up the wine with napkins. Class act as always... Part of me wonders why the airlines and the trains don't have recessed cup holders in the arm rests to prevent most spills but that aside...I should have been drinking water...or sprite...or gin....anything clear!

Arrival in Florence was uneventful. Train stations are much closer to the downtown areas of the cities than the airports...a quick 10-minute, 40€ (approx $50) cab ride for us. Had we not had to worry about dragging suitcases over cobblestone roads and walkways it would have been an easy walk. We learned in Florence (and again in Rome) that the "first" floor of these apartment buildings is not really the first floor. It is really the second floor. Storefronts occupy the ground floors and elevators for floors 1-6 are usually located one flight of stairs up. With very high ceilings on the ground floor these flights are long and often the equivalent of 2-3 of our typical residential staircases. It makes for some interesting weight-lifting lugging the suitcases up to our apartment... In the old but charming building in Florence the marble stairs were stairs were steep and angled down which put me on high alert each time we left the apartment. Going up was simple & required only stamina, but I must have fallen down steps in a prior life so I am always cautious going down...

We learned in Paris and in Venice that the first question after getting the apartment details was/is "What is your WiFi login and password"? The second is "Where is the nearest grocery store"? We would then promptly go out and purchase water, and primarily breakfast foods...sometimes something for a dinner. We were supposed to have a taco salad one night. Bags of mixed greens were easy to find... not so with the tortilla chips. I thought I was purchasing a bag of dehydrated kidney beans only to discover that I had grabbed an envelope of Kidney bean 'zuppa' ... we added too much water and it did indeed become the soup it was supposed to be but without much flavor so i added an entire jar of picante/salsa and it became this amazing Mexican soup!

View of Florence in the distance...

Prior to leaving home we had pre-booked a 6-hour day-trip into Montagnola...the countryside of Tuscany....for our first full-day in Florence. Tours by Roberto picked us up at our apartment door and proceeded to take us out of his 'dreaded and despised' Florence. He's opinionated; lives an hour away in Sienna; hates crowds, traffic, and the city life. Most tourists are on his hate list including Americans and Asians, about whom he made snide remarks. [Me thinks he bites the hands that feed him!] Apart from his snide, know-it-all attitude, Roberto was a history & archeology buff; a man with a tough exterior that writes poetry. Driving up and out of his dreaded Florence we learned much about the countryside surrounding Florence; the origin of some of our often used present-day expressions, and lots about his life. His American-born wife (whose father was the dean of communications at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA.) and he have two children...a perfect 15-year old daughter, and a 10-year-old son who is "up for sale, and better birth control than condoms". He knows lots about places familiar to us...Hickory, NC; Boone, NC; the Adirondacks, etc.

Roberto had many quotes from famous people that he had memorized..."There are only two things that are infinite in the universe. One is space; the other is stupidity. I'm not certain about the first"....Einstein, I think. Or how about "The mother of stupid people is always pregnant". Hmmmm....I would hate to live with him!

Another View of Florence

Tuscan hillside

Olive Trees

Looking beyond Roberto's snide remarks and opinions he was a very learned man. He prides himself with having a business that takes foreigners to little known places where tourists would get a true flavor of the Italian life outside of the cities. He took us first to an Etruscan, man-made hill constructed back in medieval times which, when covered with earth concealed tombs that were not discovered until the early 1900's by a farmer plowing his fields. At some point the tombs had been ransacked; valuables taken but the remains were taken to a museum. Interesting point about the Etruscans...they believed that building the tombs atop the highest hillside would ensure a swift journey to heaven and the gods above. The higher the graves; the better. We got to go into one of the tombs which honestly, given the time that they were built, are engineering marvels. Arched ceilings constructed without our modern day tools that can calibrate distances between supports to ensure that the ceiling didn't cave in with the tremendous weight of the earth moved overtop. Just amazing...