Overlooking Florence
It all started with pasta. Grandson Nico (then about 12) had been given a pasta maker. For several years he used it a lot and would come over to make fresh pasta for us. One day I thought “I wished I could take him to Italy and we could learn to make pasta and other fabulous Italian dishes…” Just wishful thinking.
Until… I checked with Intrepid - an Australian tour company which specializes in small group tours. I had used them before and really liked their focus: small groups, local sourcing, environmentally friendly. ‘Lo and behold, Intrepid offered a "‘culinary tour of Italy’.
The itinerary got me excited: it included Venice and Bologna, places I had not been to before. I loved Tuscany which was also included. We checked our budget and the dates. It had to fit into Nico’s summer holidays. Once we decided that it was doable, we told Nico, now 16, was very keen and excited to embark on a culinary adventure together.
Hello David!
Planning a trip, especially with a grandchild along, requires a lot of work. Booking with a tour company saves hours and hours of figuring out where to stay and how to get around. We added several days on either end to our trip, which still required days of planning, checking and booking trains as well as booking rooms. But planning is part of the fun and anticipation.
And thus it came to pass that we embarked, last August, on a culinary tour of Italy. the tour did not include Florence, which I felt Nico should see since we’d be so close. So we flew to Rome and - straight from the airport - took a train to Florence. Here I had booked three nights accommodations in what I thought was some sort of hotel. It turned out that we had to pick up a key at an office, walk a few streets and there we found a large building resembling a monastery. The street and the building in the heart of Florence date back to the Middle Ages or earlier and were likely the home of a well to do family. Now, we had a lovely room in this building. With a court yard and thick walls, it was dead quiet inside. The famous Florence Duomo was perhaps 300 meters away.
We slept like a log, that first night after a long flight. In the morning, we staggered outside and found a fabulous little breakfast cafe - La Milkeria. It offered cappuchino and croissants but also waffles and Nutella crepes. Our culinary adventure was already beginning.
We strolled all of Florence’s city center - past the Duomo, along wonderful narrow streets, we waved at David himself. Crossed Ponte Vecchio and hiked up the hill across the river Arno to a viewpoint with fabulous views of this pictoresque city in which Michaelangelo and Da Vinci once strolled the very same streets.
Florence’s Ponte Vecchio
Nico tried his best to straighten out the leaning tower.
The next day we walked to the main train station: Santa Maria Novella. There we bought tickets to Pisa. If you are that close, you do need to see this world famous tower. It’s a 60 meter tall bell tower by a cathedral. Built in 1173, the tower is constructed of 14,000 tons of white marble. But right from the start, the tower started leaning because the ground was unstable. Even during the construction, they tried to fix it by making columns on one side taller. But nothing worked… The tower was finished 200 years after construction started and by then it was really leaning. In the 1920’s, cement was injected underneath the tower and, just recently, it was stabilized but not straightened out. Why fix a problem that attracts millions each year? We handled the heat and the crowds long enough to walk around the tower, take some fun photos of this famous leaning structure, and headed back by train to Florence.
Florence seems to be the city of gelato! We found a lovely little restaurant with a quiet court yard and ended up with gelato for dessert, watching the sun set over the the red Duomo.
