Revisiting Florence

The New York Time's most read article is currently "36 Hours in Florence"...

In my expert opinion, I agree with the author about trendy restaurants popping up and traffic decreasing and therefore creating a more pleasant walk around the city.

But perhaps we needed to take her advice about "Making a bella figura (a good impression) is an important Italian custom, both in terms of how you look and how you act. Do your part with a facial at the new spa at the Four Seasons in Florence," in order to fully understand, to see with freshly cucumbered eyes (I don't know what that does) the "Evidence of a more youthful and revitalized Florence (that) is everywhere."

Also, the picture is a bit misleading as there is little biking in Florence (we were advised not to by the hotel receptionist).

Anyway, I wanted to comment on the article but I couldn't, so this blog post, reaching about 4 readers, will have to do.

Turkey updates coming soon!

Where to Next?

New alphabets, architecture, and culture - the trip is becoming an adventure! 

We left Rome, spent two days in sun-drenched Rhodes, then caught a ferry to Fethiye.  The marina is beautiful.  Green mountains surround the marina, and distant blue hills seem to swell from the blue sea itself.  Tomorrow we take a bus 40 minutes outside of Fethiye to Yakabagh House for our final work exchange on a farm.

Hot, sticky, and loving Rome

Unfortunately our days at Pulicaro came to an end.  We said our good-byes and hopped in the car with a family of guests from Denmark who also happened to be catching the train from Orvieto to Roma termini at 10am.  Bernard, their adorable three and a half year old, kept us entertained on the hour or so train ride to The Eternal City. 

Our heavy backpacks in tow in the 90+ degree heat, we walked several blocks to the hotel we booked on Expedia.  We rang the doorbell.  No one answered.  Rang again.  No answer.  Found an internet cafe.  Called with Skype.  Disconnected.  The number wasn't in service.  Great.  But hey, we're in Rome, so we jumped on one of those red double decker bus tours and saw the sights.  Dragging our bags around wasn't fun, but back to the hotel we went.  Still no reply.  Long story short, we're now happily in a friendly B&B in Trastevere, no thanks to Expedia though.

Besides that, Rome is incredible!  There are so many religious, historical, archeological, and modern sites to see, cobblestone streets to wander, paper thin margherita pizza to try - it's best to adopt the attitude that you can't see it all.  Over 2,000 years in the making, Rome is still a vibrant urban center, glorious as ever.

A WWOOFing day at Pulicaro

Here's how a typical wwoofing day at Pulicaro unfolds:

• 6:30AM: Simple breakfast of toast, jams, yogurt, and cereal with hosts Marco and Chiara in their kitchen where the radio plays LOUDLY and it's EARLY (I always thought it was stuck on the max volume, but, as it turns out, it's just the really passionate Italian newscaster detailing the morning weather and traffic like it's the World Cup finale, every morning). Nonetheless, with that and an espresso, and Marco and Chiara's ever cheerfulness, we're ready to go.

• 7 - 11:30AM: I'd say about 80% work and the rest idle time that we use to weed or pass the soccer ball. The idle time stems from a busy farmer (or any employer) taking a wwoofer (or intern) for two weeks. Certain tasks are completed with common sense and a bit of that university knowledge (farm animals enjoy food and water each day!), but many projects require Q&A sessions with said busy, though patient and didactic in our case, farmer. The work consists of turning the soil, preparing drip irrigation, planting some vegetables, and harvesting other vegetables under a sun that's already too strong at 9AM. It's hot, sweaty, physically demanding. It's a farm. For city folk like me, it's a free, long, edible morning session at the gym, plus a tan. Not bad.

• 11:30 - 1:30PM: Clean up the work area and help with miscellaneous tasks like carrying the harvest to the house and playing with the dogs. Wash up, daily nap vs. 2nd espresso decision, and then help with lunch.

Naps usually win.
• 1:30 - 2:30PM: Lunch under the mulberry tree with Marco, Chiara, and Chiara's parents. On a 90 degree day I'd usually say no thanks to a bowl of warm pasta for lunch. But I'm usually not in Italy, and usually not offered pasta fresca from an Italian, and never exercising for extended hours in the morning, so the bowl of pasta is perfect. Sometimes served with a side of courgette (zucchini), sometimes with tomatoes and mozzarella, and always peppered by more passionate Italian conversations ranging from the scum of Berlusconi to, in all seriousness, how long to cook the pasta.

• 2:30 - 5:00PM: The heat forces us all indoors. If someone goes to work in the kitchen (prepare pasta and gnocchi, butcher wild boar), we'll happily help. If not, we'll spend time reading or working on our netbooks to answer emails, update blog posts and pictures, research the next leg of the trip, check headlines. I thought, after all this time away on farms, that I would not want to spend too much time on the internet. But Chiara, a farmer with an iPhone, connected to both her land and the world, tells me that it's all good, that I don't have a problem when I'm busy looking up where to eat in Rome or refreshing espn.com to see where Lebron landed.

• 5:00 - 7:30PM: Feed and water the 5 goats, 50ish rabbits, 100ish ducks and turkeys and geese, and 250ish chickens. Just thinking about what to write here makes me tired. If you're thinking about starting an animal farm (because who isn't thinking about starting an animal farm), then here is my advice: start with rabbits as they're friendly, clean, quiet, quite reproductive, delicious, and slowly jumping onto menus in America; raise some cute ducklings and, when you're girlfriend isn't looking, rub their bellies and livers in an excited, mad scientist manner; keep a dozen hens and two roosters (breeding purposes) for the sole purpose of eating their eggs; think long and hard as a small-scale farmer if you'd like to not vacation, even for a weekend, as the animals are a 365 day responsibility. So, unless you're like Marco, whose love of animals transcends a job title and results in well raised livestock, proceed with caution.

Larissa giving water to the chickens

• 7:30 - 9PM: Shower, play soccer, read, help with dinner.

• 9:00 - 10:30PM: Dinner. Same as lunch, throw in some goose or chicken, and end with Gigi's (Chiara's father) homemade gelato. He, along with his wife, owned the oldest gelato shop in Milan -- "Orsi" ...He'll use apricots and strawberries from the garden, and it's amazing.
  

• 10:30 - 6:30AM: Sleep.

Dinner at a castle

Twenty minutes of hilly, curvy roads and we pulled into Castello di Proceno in Tuscany.  The gracious hosts (sitting on either side of Andrew) are friends of Chiara and Marco.  Beef tongue carpaccio was surprisingly delicious, though I didn't know what it was until after tasting it.  Thanks Andrew and Marco.

It's easy to see why the beautifully restored castle, farmhouse, and restaurant - with it's fresh, regional food - earned a star from Michelin last year.  Below, guests enjoy a quiet meal on the garden terrace.

Authentic Italian: Great food, big family, beautiful setting

We're having a fabulous time with Marco, Chiara, their friends and family here at Pulicaro

Andrew making pasta fresca with Fiorella

 

Larissa making gnocchi

Pasta fresca under a mullberry tree.  From the right, Chiara (owner of Pulicaro), Chiara's parent's friends, Gigi (Chiara's father), Andrew, Clara (Chiara's mother), Marco (owner), Oliver (wwoofer from UK)

I'd like it bleeding, please

That'sa Mario in the butchering corner of Trattoria Mario's, a Florence staple that'll serve you the above 1.2kg bistecca alla Fiorentina "rare only".

A tarnished gem

The 10 euro, 3 hour train ride from Florence to Orvieto was supposed to be filled with important, contemplative stares out the window like you see on Eurail pamphlets. The rain, however, washed out the passing farms and hilltop villages so I took out my netbook to write about Florence.

Florence is a masterpiece in need of restoration. Cobblestone streets and weathered statues add character, tell stories. The centuries of soot and relatively recent additions of grafitti do not. Maybe my expectations were skewed by arriving from the newly refurbished, stunning 2010 Bordeaux, where the limestone buildings actually shine (centuries of soot lasered and powerwashed) and the wine actually makes up for the mostly overrated French food that I encountered over seven weeks through the countryside and village hopping. As incredible as Bordeaux looks and tastes, it is worth noting that France is $100 billion in the hole -- an amount that must somehow (more debt) appear by 2013 in order to comply to EU's country club rules.

I don't know about Italy's budget situation, but some tourist revenue should rollback into clean-up projects and perhaps rollover into programs for the tagging youth.

The government's complacency towards cleaning the city is, to me, frustratingly dismissable given the well-kept art work and memorials inside the museums and churches. You walk into the Uffizi Museum and see Botticellis, Donatellos, Michelangelos, da Vincis, Rembrandts. You stand in Dante's house, walk ten minutes, and stare up in awe at David. You end the day by standing before Galileo's tomb, shaking your head in disbelief at what you're looking at and what you've seen that day, only to walk away with the understanding that this place was no doubt the "gem of the Renaissance".

If you're going, walk in between museums with gelato in hand. The city will be perfect. And if you pass by Machiavelli's statue outside the Uffizi, give him a nod for his continued influence.

Where to Next?

Italia!!!

At 8:30pm we'll be touching down in Bolonga, home of spaghetti bolongese of course. After spending the day there, we're catching the train to Florence where Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, Giotto, the Lippis, Masaccio, Botticelli, Pontormo and more have all left their mark.

And then, onto the farm! We're WWOOFing at this organic farm/agrotourism spot.

A direct quote from our hosts: "If you like to learn more about food production, would you be interested in learning how to cook jams, how to prepare handmade pasta and something like these?" !Si, si! Italy here we come.

Bonjour Bordeaux!

Out of the countryside and into Bordeaux. We arrived on Sunday, met up with Jane (so good to see her again!!) at her friend's house outside the city, and had a wonderful introduction to the city. Her friends, a French and American couple who met working for Doctors without Borders in Somalia, are wonderful, welcoming us to stay the night. After a long, leisurely lunch Jane, Andrew and I walked around the nice, suburban town of Blanquefort. Like many of the French towns we've seen so far, there's a pool, area for festivals, skate park, bike lanes, good bus system, and other amenities that lay the foundations for cohesive, healthy communities.

We took the 8pm bus into Bordeaux to catch the last evening of the annual wine festival. There was an incredibly creative light show projected onto imposing 18th century facades. The show was a satirical explanation of how Bordeaux became a major wine region. It was a great introduction to our short term vacation between hosts.