The second day was a free day and we took the opportunity to explore one of the hill towns near La Rosa called Volterra. It was an Etruscan city (Pre-Roman) but there were also Roman ruins. It was very charming. There were lots of cobblestone winding roads to walk around. Volterra wasn’t as touristy as some towns we have been too. We got to see alot of the locals in action as they visited with each other on a Saturday night. We also went to a fall festival while there and got to taste all the fresh olive oil that was just harvested along with various other meats, cheeses, cookies, and even roasted chestnuts (which I had never had before but are now a new favorite).

The third day, 11/6/06 was a Welcome dinner that had been delayed until today at one of the local restaurants, and we also got to do our own wine tasting at Il Selvino’s neighbor, Fattoria Fibbiano with it’s owner Giuseppe. We tasted the five wines that his winery produces and also got to tour his factory and grounds. Quite a special treat.

By day four, 11/7/06 we were becoming quite used to our perfect Tuscan world and had the chance to experience our second cooking class with Arianna and Marisa. This time it was a lunch and we learned how to cook 4 different types of Tuscan lunch dishes. On top of that we learned 2 different ways to cook chestnuts and also learned how to make HOMEMADE tomato sauce. YUMMY. It was great. We of course got to eat all our creations when we were done and they were all fabulous. I am going to have to definitely try out Marisa’ s recipes for our friends when we get home! Chris also did well in the kitchen despite some slower starts with chopping spices with this special crazy knife things called a Mezza Luna. Marisa said he improved greatly from day 1 to day 2. Me, well she said repeatedly to Chris that “She make very good wife someday” while referring to my cooking skills, and I took this as a big compliment. You know you have succeeded as a chef when you impress a lovely Italian cook.

We were sad to leave La Rosa and La Mia Toscana. I had the best time, as did Chris, and we wished we had more time here. This has certainly been one of the highlights of my trip and I would recommend this cooking class to anyone. I am sure I will share stories about Arianna, Marisa and Il Selvino with people for years to come.

Tags: agriturismo,agriturismo il selvino,alessandro,Arianna,ariannaandfriends,fattoria fibbiano,giuseppe,La Mia Toscana,la rosa,marisa,Slowtrav,toscana,tuscany,volterra
Categories: Becky Blogs, Italy
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Italy and Spain have this entity called the “Siesta” It is a break in the middle of the day where businesses shut down and everyone takes a break. They go home to be with their families and eat etc. It is usually between 1 P.M. to 4 P.M., although it varies greatly. It is very hard to try to do any shopping between these hours and if you forget about it, even going to the grocery store can be challenging. Today was one of those days. We wanted to grab a snack from the grocery store, as we had missed lunch, but they didn’t open up again till 4 P.M. and I was STARVING.

The other problem comes in that they eat mucho later over here. Some restaurants do not open for dinner until like 730 P.M. So, the end effect is that if you miss lunch, you aren’t going to find much to eat until alot later. I still have not quite figured out what you do in between the gray zone. If it is after like 3 P.M. but before 7:30 P.M., just pray that you have some snacks in your pocket, or you are going to be a hypoglycemic mess by dinner.

Tags: Siesta
Categories: Becky Blogs, Italy
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We wanted to do something special in Italy. We had talked about doing a cooking class, but after searching and searching online while in Bratislava, I thought that it may not happen because so many of them were sooooo expensive. We figured that they were only for rich tourists on massive vacation packages with no budgets. BUT, then we found www.lamiatoscana.info (La Mia Toscana) on a web page called www.slowtrav.com. They had a 4 day Tuscan cooking class that sounded perfect and the price wasn’t in the thousands. I dropped them an email and the rest is history.

Our host was Arianna.scany-italy-11406 She works for La Mia Toscana, but also has her own agency that you can see at www.ariannaandfriends.com. She was wonderful and I highly recommend her. We were set up to stay at an olive farm that also was a B & B. It was at an Agriturismo, which is Italian for agricultural tourism. Per our guru, Risk Steves, they were apparently set up in the 1980′s as a way for farmers to stay on their land and start a B & B at the same time. It was a great way to see some of the country side and also an excuse to rent a car and explore some of the surrounding hill towns in central Tuscany. Our B & B was at Agriturismo Il Selvino, www.ilselvino.it, run by Alessandro near the small town of La Rosa.

It was heaven. We had our own room. It wasn’t loud and crazy and I didn’t have to shower with other naked women in the room like at the hostel! It was in the countryside and there were beautiful hills and pine trees all around. The sun shine was beautiful and was 360 degrees all around me and not blocked by any “city” buildings.

They put us to work pretty quickly after we got there the first day, 11/4/06. It was our first cooking class and we were learning some typical Tuscan dinners. Arianna was our interpreter, while our chef, Marisa, gave us some of her secrets. Marisa didn’t speak much English, but I was quickly able to understand her “sign language” of what to do in the kitchen. It was so much fun. The longer I am in Europe, the more I realize that for some things you don’t need a language to communicate, hand signals work just fine in the kitchen, and lots of smiles and great laughs are always universal. We cooked for about 3- 3 1/2 hours and produced 8 different dishes, including a local desert. The dishes were being served not only to us but also to the other guests at the ranch. EEK the pressure! Everything turned out splendidly though. It was soooo good. I of course wrote all the recipes down, although I am sure I need to tweak some things since I know Marisa uses generous “pinches” of her spices and I am still not sure how much olive oil she was using sometimes aside from it looked like “gobs” as she just poured it into the pots LOL Olive oil flows like water in these Tuscan recipes!

Categories: Becky Blogs, Italy
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We took a train from Venice to Pisa as it was to be the start of our Tuscan cooking adventure over the next few days. As we were going to be spending the night, the next a.m. on the agenda was of course the Leaning Tower. Our schedule was tight and we did not have time to climb it, but we did have time to wander all around it and create funny poses beside it. The tower is in the Field of Miracles (Campo dei Miracoli) with the cathedral (or Duomo). The Leaning Tower is actually the bell tower for the nearby Duomo. It is nearly 200 feet tall and 55 feet wide. It weighs 14,000 tons and leans at 15 feet off the vertical axis. It rests on a shallow 13 ft foundation and is sinking on the south side. There are 8 stories to the tower, 294 steps to the top, and it took 2 centuries to complete with at least 3 different architects. As an aside note, it was at it’s summit that Galileo Galilei performed his famous experiments with gravity.

The first stones were laid in 1174 by Bonanno Pisano and the tower started to lean almost right after construction was started due to the marshy multi-layered unstable soil. The first four floors were completed and then construction was stopped for unknown reasons. In 1272, a second architect began and built the next three stories but this time angled them backwards to try to stop the lean. Construction was then stopped again for unknown reason, but then finally restarted/finished in 1350 when the belfry was added.

There have been many attempts through out history to try to correct the tower’s lean. In 1550, one architect tried to solve the problem by reinforcing the base and this actually worked until 1838 when they tried once again to fix the problem and pumped water out of the ground. This then destabilized the tower more and worsened the lean by 1mm/yr! In 1990 they closed the tower and spent 30 million to try to fix the problem. First they used anchored steel cables, then 600 tons of lead on the north side as a counterweight. Nothing really helped until a breakthrough came when they drilled 15 ft holes in the ground and sucked out 60 tons of soil! This then straightened the tower by 6 inches. It turned back history by a couple hundred years. But, there are still some trouble spots due to the lean. On the side that sees less sun, more moss grows that breaks apart the mortar and stones, and on the other side that sees more sun there are more problems with wind and erosion. Alas the tower continues to fall, but hopefully it will still be around for awhile!

Categories: Becky Blogs, Italy
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Chris is a candy-holic, although I did not realize this until we got to Europe. He was keeping his tendencies toward this very hidden. He says because he was too cheap. Apparently, although too cheap for U.S. candy, he has a weakness for buying random European candy, and has done so for the last 2.5 months. This is all well and good, until you realize that in the last 2.5 months he hasn’t bought any “good” candy as all of the random brands that he picks up to “try”, are all very crappy. I do have to hand it to him though, even though he has seen nothing but candy disappointments, he keeps coming back for more. Every time we enter a store, his eyes are immediately seeking out the shelves for the cheap price of a brand he has never seen or heard of before. Sometimes he picks out the particular candy based on the feel of the package, sometime based on the strange picture on the outside, but other times he just watches to see what other people in the store are buying and “trusts” them, that if they like it, perhaps he will also. Poor Chris, alas no success of yet. Perhaps this last month he will find something worthwhile the first time so he can then buy it a second time as a new favorite. In the meantime, I will have to continue to watch his face as he takes that first bite only to realize it was an error in purchasing.

Me myself, I stick with my faithful “regulars”. There are Snickers, Twix and M&M’s everywhere, and after eating them, I have had any of the faces that he usually has after his “candy adventures” LOL My regulars never leave me disappointed.

Tags: candy-holic,crappy candy,European candy
Categories: Becky Blogs, Italy
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