Italy...Take One - Where is “our Italy”?!

Ciao!

We have placed some big expectations on our visit to Italy.  Some have rung true, some have been better than we ever thought, and some have missed the mark a bit but mostly because we were naively unrealistic about the volume of tourists here in the summer.  Please don’t read that as negative because we are still having a wonderful time!  We just have to remember to travel to destinations that WE want to go to, not where everyone else wants to go.  We are currently just across the Adriatic sea from the East coast of Italy on the coast of Croatia taking a little beach break with friends before we return to the second half of our Italian experience.

Venice

Our train to Venice arrived in the evening and we caught the last ferry out to our hotel.  As we booked the room close to our arrival date, we didn’t find a reasonably priced hotel in Venice itself but we did find a cute little B&B on the island of Murano, a ten minute ferry ride from the center of town.  This was the BEST thing that happened to us the whole time we were in Venice.  When we arrived in Murano the streets were almost deserted except for one restaurant with a few couples enjoying a very quiet and peaceful dinner by the canal.  After checking in, we joined the “crowd” and enjoyed our first Italian meal of Caprese salad, homemade pasta with local clams, and a bottle of prosecco.  It was a delicious meal and a perfect night after a long travel day.

An exhibit by one of Murano's famous glass artists.

The next morning we grabbed a ferry back to the city center.  Venice was an adorable city for just getting lost exploring the back alleys and nooks and crannies of neighborhoods, but when we got the heart of the city it was packed with tourists.  This made simply walking down the streets difficult and turned us off so we caught a ferry and enjoyed a ride around the canals while exploring Venice from the water.  We did manage to visit the “must see” spots of Piazzetta San Marco and Ponte Di Rialto but the quieter neighborhoods were our favorite!

We could barely walk side by side in some places!

One of the many small canals.

Grand Canal or "Main Street Venice"

Gondola traffic jam.  Not so romantic, eh?

We also spent an afternoon taking a ferry to Burano which is famous for it’s colorful houses and delicate lace making.  It was a very small town but we enjoyed seeing the locals live their quiet, remote lives.  We had another quiet dinner near our hotel in Murano and packed up for our quick train to Florence.  We enjoyed Venice but left still wondering where the Italy was that has been in our minds for so long.

Leaning bell tower of Murano...who needs Pisa's crowds?

Florence

By the time we reached Florence we were tired of “sightseeing” per se and must admit that we weren’t in the right frame of mind to truly explore the city and enjoy what it had to offer, nor did we really do the city justice through the lens.  We wandered around visiting the city’s highlight areas for a few hours and didn’t fall in love like we had expected.  That being said, we had the best gelato since arriving in Italy and some delicious pasta and wine!  Both of our pasta dishes were firsts for us with one having sautéed zucchini flower and the other having cinghiale (wild boar).  Both were wonderful!  And in case you were ever considering it, pistachio and hazelnut gelato do make a perfect lunch!  We did enjoy our short time in Florence but again left wondering where the Italy was that we had been daydreaming about. 

The Duomo was much more impressive from the outside than inside.

The River Arno and Ponte Vecchio beyond.

Greve in Chianti!

We were ready for something with a slower pace in a more rural setting.  As luck would have it, we picked Greve in Chianti, smack in the middle of the Tuscan countryside and only a forty-five minute bus ride south of Florence.  This location was the Italian postcard perfection that we had been looking for!  We booked a room in a small B&B on a hilltop at the edge of town and as a bonus we gained a set of Italian grandparents for a few days!  After getting settled into our room, we took a stroll through the town and picked out a few restaurants for our stay, visited some great shops with local products in the town square, then spent the afternoon back at the B&B sitting in lounge chairs overlooking the Tuscan countryside.  While relaxing, we were almost hit in the head with falling plums, which we promptly ate, then continued to eat for the remainder of our stay.  After discovering the plum trees over our head, we walked the gardens and found pear trees, apricot trees, tomatoes, green peppers, grapes, olives, herbs, all of which seem to comprise your everyday Mediterranean back yard. 

View from behind our room.

We spent some wonderful time on the back patio and in the yard.

View from the front patio.  The hill was good for walking off big meals!

Lunch of fresh mozzarella, pecorino, salami, rosemary toast, cherries, and wine of course!

This plum almost hit Wes on the head, so it paid the ultimate price!

Greve's main square, which is actually a triangle...

We've seen A LOT of hanging hams, but not many with tails still attached.  We're not fans.

Our hosts, Paulo and Ana, were so warm and welcoming and made us feel as if we were staying with long lost Italian family.  The only other guests were an older couple from Lyon, France that have stayed with them for several years.  One evening after dinner, we were relaxing in the yard after sunset and decided it was time to turn in for the night.  On our way inside, we crossed the patio where our hosts and their other guests were finishing dinner and were invited (firmly told) to sit down for dessert with them.  We had a wonderful and quite humorous end to the day while eating tiramisu and sipping homemade lemoncello, all while trying to have a conversation with a couple that spoke Italian and just a little French, a couple that spoke only French, and us who spoke neither! 

There is an enormous opinion in the online travel community that you MUST have a car to “do Tuscany”.  While a car would certainly be valuable if you wanted many quick visits in several places, seeing the countryside on foot and getting to know one town intimately was an amazing experience.  We took a beautiful walk through vineyards and olive groves to Montefioralle, a medieval village just outside Greve.  We found a perfect bench and just passed some time soaking up the view and reminiscing on the experiences of the last few months.  We also followed a ten kilometer loop trail through the rolling countryside.  Following that trail proved a little bit challenging but we managed to not get too lost! 

The village of Montefioralle.

Vineyard above Greve.

Starting our 10k walk, marked "easy" on the local guidebook.

It's only easy if you can follow the trail!  We wandered in the hills for a bit before we found this and continued!

We hopped on a local bus to Panzano, another charming Tuscan hilltop town.  Panzano is home to Dario Cecchini and his Antica Macelleria (butcher shop) and world famous restaurant Solociccia.  If you’re a fan of Anthony Bourdain you’ve probably seen this guy on No Reservations.  We were intending on trying to eat dinner a Solociccia but discovered that his Macelleria has a restaurant upstairs with a wonderful lunch.  It was one of the best meals we’ve ever had, even if a little protein heavy!  We knew we were in the right place to eat when you enter the front door of the butcher shop and a server pours you a glass of local red wine and offers you bread, salami, lardo on toast, and then walks you through a secret door in the back of the kitchen that leads to the restaurant upstairs!  The other meals back in Greve may not have had the cache that this lunch had but were definitely wonderful in their own right. 

We found “our Italy” in Greve in Chianti!  We are not suggesting that we did not enjoy Venice or Florence, but Greve was what we had been looking for in every way.  We will have a chance to find even more of “our Italy” in just a few days after we return from Croatia’s Dalmatian coast!