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A Slow Drive in Tuscany

Driving in the countryside is like a therapy against stress for me, especially on perfect summer days like today.  Even when we go somewhere on holiday, driving around is a big part of our vacation.

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I love Pisa in June

Normally I write about Pisa when I am in Pisa, and about southern Tuscany when I am in Civitella, my home village. Tonight I will make an exception because I have spent three days away from my computer and I haven’t had the time to write about how much I love Pisa at this time of the year.

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The Etruscans once lived here

Tuscany owes its name to the ancient Etruscan people, also known as Tusci, who lived and flourished here until they were assimilated into the Roman territories during the Roman Republic.

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Eco-Tuscany: Fresh milk from the cow to your table

Got Milk? / Flickr photo by cwalker71

Up to the late ’80s, the village had a milk shop. A lady would sell you fresh milk delivered to the shop that very morning by local producers. You had to bring your own bottle. Over time, the milk shops closed, fresh milk was sold in milk cartons, and long-life milk became more and more popular. I always use it, but it’s nothing like the milk I used to drink when I was a kid.

The good news is that the “latteria“ is coming back…

Continue reading this article @ At Home in Tuscany

Luxury travel & local communities

Lately I’ve been thinking about the relationship between luxury hotels or resorts and the local communities.  I read about the famous British chef Gordon Ramsay coming to manage the restaurant of the brand new luxury resort in Tuscany called “Castel Monastero“, just outside Siena

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Pane e companatico: bread in Tuscany

Photo by foéÖþoooey

This is a linguistic trace of the central role played by bread in the Italian culinary tradition, especially when ‘companatico’ was scarce and more expensive than most people could afford. Bread is so important in our dietary tradition that we have national laws explicitly meant to define the different types and the products which can go in its preparation.

Italians apparently eat 66kg of bread per person every year. My grandparents ate bread with anything: pasta, vegetables and even fruit. I remember being served bread and figs and bread and wine with sugar during festive family meals. And every time I go to my parents’ place in the countryside, I cannot but remember my grandfather sitting on a half-broken wooden bench, slicing a stale loaf of bread with his pocket knife and eating it with ripe grapes or peaches.

Continue reading this article @ At Home in Tuscany

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‘Gentle travel’ is the way to go!

Today, my source of inspiration was a chat I had with Giulia of the beautiful Locanda della Valle Nuova (Le Marche) about an interesting article on ecotourism that she posted on Twitter titled ‘Has the Whole Ecotourism Industry Shot Itself in the Foot?‘.

The author, Len Cordiner, CEO of whl.travel, discusses the problem of the certification of accommodations and tours as ‘eco-friendly’, a matter that I will leave aside here.

But the interesting point he makes is that he believes something did not quite work as planned, since many people tend to equate green vacations with doing it tough – hard beds and tasteless food. Green or sustainable holidays were perceived as something only tree huggers would do, not at all fun or enjoyable.

For this reason, he says, we need a new thinking and his proposal is to engage travellers.

Continue reading this article @ At Home In Tuscany

Photo: Dubrovnik old town, Stephen Chapman

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Words matter: ‘local travel’ & other phrases

Using local transport in Antigua, Guatemala / Photo by Stephen Chapman

Over the past few days I have enjoyed reading a number of articles about travel issues in general. One I have particularly enjoyed, and I am sorry that I did not get a chance to read before, is ‘Another new local travel knowledge site‘ by Stephen Chapman, founder of Make Travel Fair.

Stephen discusses a very interesting issue:

“how quickly a phrase or an idea can catch on and seem to spawn a whole new generation of websites almost overnight”

more specifically he deals with how

‘Local travel’ feels like it’s hit the big time at the moment, everyone wants a piece of the action, everyone wants to get involved in a web start-up and wrestle to become the next big thing in travel.

The article got me thinking about a number of issues. We have a vacation rental in Tuscany. We made the decision to make it as locally-rooted as possible from the very moment we started it. It seemed the obvious way to go, despite being a clear counter-tendency in a place like Tuscany, where ‘off-the-beaten-path’ (if such thing still exists here) is generally equated with ‘completely deprived of any tourist interest at all’. In such a well-know region, if nobody has already made an area ‘popular’, then it must be because there is nothing to see or do there.

Continue reading this article @ At Home in Tuscany

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Village life in the Tuscan countryside

Fiori e Dintorni website

This morning I accompanied a soon-to-be bride to the village florist’s shop Fiori e Dintorni. The florist is a dear friend, a true artist. She doesn’t speak English but many foreign brides go to her for wedding flowers because her work is really outstanding.  So much better than most florists’ in the region.

A comment by the bride’s mother got me thinking. She was amazed that a flower store, and such a lovely one at that, could survive in such a small village.

Not the first time I’ve heard the question “how do people survive out here?”.

This got me thinking about how relative a concept “out here” is and how much people from cities often have no idea of how much stuff you can do living “slower”, in a small, quiet village in the Tuscan countryside.

Continue reading this article @ At Home in Tuscany