Without further ado, some more photographs from our recent trip to Tuscany. Our home base was in Lucignano a great little town in southern Tuscany. We ventured all around Tuscany during our trip. We had brought our Garmin GPS, which was pre-loaded with European maps, but it was completely blown away by the TomTom GPS provided to us once we arrived at our house. The TomTom won in every category, directions, detailed mapping and map display.
We met Carey’s sister Ashley and her husband Mike at the estate of the Il Borro Winery owned by the Ferragamo family. The Ferragamos also purchased the tiny medieval village you can see in the background.
On the tour at Il Borro
We visited the Duomo in Siena. Highly recommended. I suggest getting a guidebook (like Rick Steves Tuscany) and skipping the sugar-coated audio guide, which skip minor details. For example, no mention in the Church-provided audio guide of this painting depicting Catherine of Siena marrying Jesus as his mother watches. It’s odd how upset Catholics got with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, a work of fiction , because it suggested that Jesus had a girlfriend. But 700 years ago, not only was it OK for someone to write about their "mystical marriage" to Christ, you got canonized for it!
Trompe-loeil painting on ceiling at the Duomo. A carefully crafted illusion.
An incredibly graphic depiction, in marble, of the Massacre of the Innocents. Seeing all the mothers clinging to their babies (and the babies without heads) made Carey sad.
So, it was on to brighter things, like dinner. Here are our homemade pizzas in our wood-burning pizza oven.
Before this trip, it had been 8 years since Carey and I had been to Tuscany. We were amazed at how commercialized and "touristy" Tuscany had become. Siena was still the same but with more boutiques and a lot more tourists. Two of our favorite Tuscan hill towns, Montalcino and Pienza were nearly unrecognizable due to the "improvements" made to the towns.
Montepulciano, in southern Tuscany, must be off the beaten path just enough to have retained the old world charm that seemed be slipping away elsewhere. As we walked up to the ancient gates of Montepulciano, we realized we were in the midst of a bike race.
Here’s some of that old world charm we found in Montepulciano.
And again. One of my favorite photographs from the trip. A man who lives on a fairly busy street, watering his plants on his balcony, while wearing his coat & hat. So, so old world! The old guy noticed me after the first click of the shutter and wandered back into his apartment.
