So, our apartment luck ran out in Porto, where we arrived from Pisa on 13 July – fourth floor. Now with more heavy luggage than ever.
It were all Florence & Tuscany’s fault. We adored Florence. We stayed in a fantastic place called Le Tre Stanze – a palazzo building just behind the Duomo.
We had the Junior Suite – one single room and a double room, with a bathroom. In actuality, the rooms were huge.
We shared a kitchen with the rest of the guests and Patrick, the Swiss-Italian owner and manager, who said the building had been in his family for about 60 years. Apparently Palazzos were going cheap back then, being so big and so costly to maintain.
Anyway – it was glorious staying there.
We felt quite regal. The first few moments sitting in our room made us feel like we might be in a painting.
After the tightly packed art schedule we had in Venice, we had only one gallery per day – Uffizi then Accademia the day after – to fit in, and we whipped round those in about an hour each.
Renaissance, Renaissance, Medici, Vasari, blah blah blah. In some ways I wish I had brushed up on my Renaissance history so that I was a bit more excited by the vast swathes of Giotto, Cimabue, Michaelangelo, Donatello, Da Vinci, Brunelleschi et al.
When I did actually read about the Orsanmichele building, with the important sculptures commissioned for 14th century artisan guilds, it was amazing. Instead we sat opposite it eating very good €2.50 rolls with ham, pork, cheese, tomato etc every lunchtime, before heading off for an afternoon of shopping.
We sort of needed to relax with idle consumerism after the heat, logistical stresses and intellectual demands of Venice. Sunday scored a new dress. And I somehow acquired a handbag and sunglasses…
We also visited the Florence market. Everything in Italy was tomatoes, zucchini and fennel. We were not complaining.
Picked up a car from Florence airport and drove 45 minutes into the Tuscan countryside to a place called Barberino Val D’Elsa close to Castellina in Chianti. AKA, Chiantishire, as it is usually populated by half of the home counties on holidays.
Indeed it is very touristy, but equally, very gorgeous.
We stayed in one of Federica’s apartments at Agrifuturismo. It was so pretty.
Not too sure about S’s cot though.
We overlooked a beautiful vista.
S played with an extremely tame cat.
Our plan here was to eat – we had two restaurants located in Panzano in Chianti, namely Mac Dario and Solociccia we wanted to visit. They are run by a family butcher.
Mac Dario is the burger joint.
SJ felt great satisfaction at raising the burger stakes.
For our final lunch together before SJ flew back to Melbourne, we had lunch at Solociccia. Along with maybe another 6 tables full of happy, hungry patrons.
It was a revelrous afternoon of beautiful meat dishes and surprisingly delicious and memorable veg accompaniments.
We weren’t too sure about the fried meats, but the menu picked up to a stupendous finale of braised beef, meltingly rich and delicious. Was too busy eating to take a photo, sorry!
And our other consumption continued to be… shopping.
It’s actually quite difficult to shop when you have a baby while yr on tour. We’ve not done any shopping (hardly) at all. I went to a baby clothing sale in London, and we bought some pans & knives in Paris. But apart from that, literally nothing. So, it might have gone to our heads a bit. But can we be blamed for the fact that the Italians have this concept called the Outlet?
You know, what with their leather goods and clothing manufacturing industries. Anyway. We somehow found our way to the Prada Outlet (called Space) and The Mall – an entire Outlet shopping centre for major designer brands – Gucci, Fendi, Marni, Pucci, Burberry, Balenciaga, Yohji Yamamoto…
So, it just so happened that we went to The Mall during sale time. Outlet + sale = massive bargains!
Well, relatively speaking. Apologies to S for her crappy future education – we spent all our money on shoes and jackets.
Is it appalling that shopping can be classed as leisure, pleasure and relaxation. Or excitement? I can’t deny I had a little thrill as we approached The Mall, with its promise of designer label goods at low, low prices.
Aside from shopping and eating, we managed a swift side trip to Siena.
After depositing SJ at Pisa airport (among the world’s most rubbish airports, btw), we made our way into the town to see if we could find the Leaning Tower. Thanks to the power of the Tom Tom sat nav, we did.
Glad we didn’t make a specific trip to Pisa just to see it, but it’s um, very nice. The dome was actually lovely, but no one talks about the dome, do they?
So – Porto. We had to pay a €50 luggage fine at pissing Pisa airport as Ryanair decided to give us a hard time, so that was aggravating. By the time we hauled all of our luggage up four flights of stairs, we were properly travel weary. After feeding S and putting her in bed, we slumped onto the sofa with beer & crisps and watched a DVD.
The next day, we managed to walk a circuit across the town, play in the park and then gratefully go back to our apartment.
Packing, unpacking, repacking, washing, acquiring food, coffee, the makings of baby’s dinner… after 2 months of this routine, we were about ready to collapse. Instead, we hauled our luggage to the train station and headed for Lisbon…
