Tuscany

The afternoon of Daniel's birthday we went to a town in Tuscany called Certaldo. We stayed in a hostel which was in a 14th century Benedictan monastary, which was (as you can imagine) extremely old, and rather cute:



We got there in time for a BBQ, set up by an English fellow called Steve, so Daniel did get a sort of party for his birthday too


We were intending to do some walking in Tuscany, to get an idea of the place, staying in a different place each night. But having got to Certaldo and seen the monastary, which was very cool, and having walked from the train station to the monastary, which was only 2 km but rather harder than expected with packs (mine had an extra couple of kg with a full water bottle), and having discovered that they rent bikes at the hostel, we thought: sod it! Let's stay. So we did.

Probably a good thing because it rained the next day so we wouldn't have walked anywhere anyway. Instead, we decided to discover Certaldo, so we ate our way around the town.
Starting with a very pretty cappucino:

then some bruschetta:

then we went in search of cake and mistakenly came across cheese, which explains why we didn't sample. We did find some eventually though, and some pizza, and some more cake, then some gelato, then we finished off with coffee (which I think makes me sleepy, anyone else have this problem??). After such a big day we got some wine (Tuscan of course) and toddled off home to drink it with pasta and tiramisu. So you see we had a big day sampling the culture.


The start of the big day, in Certaldo Alto (the old part of town)

The next day we punished ourselves for all the decadence, although we weren't intending to at all. We rented some bikes and went cycling. I have noticed there are a lot of movies set in Tuscany, usually stressed out career woman (sometimes man) goes to Tuscany for some reason, after initially hating it they fall in love, with the land, the people etc etc. After some trials they live happily ever after. My question is...why Tuscany? So we went cycling to find out.

Having heard from Steve how difficult it was to cycle out to San Gimignano we thought we would do that first. All the towns in Tuscany have been built on hills, which is a bit annoying if you are cycling, but to San G it is one big hill, which actually was fine, and we were quite cocky with how easy it was.


Looking across to San Gimignano


In San G.

After that we went on the other side of Certaldo, and for some reason, noone had told us that it was an absolute killer of a ride. So many up hills, so many down hills (with the knowledge that we will be going up again in 3 seconds). My bike was pretty crap and didn't change between the big gears 1 and 2, so I spent the entire ride in my lowest gear, scooting down the hill and not cycling again till it got steep enough (which wasn't long). So yes, it was rather tiring.



Great views though, and it was the grape harvest season, so we saw a bit of that going on. That reminds me, the grapes here are fabulous and tasty and so cheap. We are nearly eating our weight in them. After that massive ride we celebrated with gelato, which is possibly not the best thing to have after a lot of exertion and an empty stomach. I have now sort of gone off tiramisu gelato...



Certaldo, also built on a hill