Under the Tuscan Sun

This has been my first full weekend in Florence where my roommates and I are finally starting to feel like we know our way around so we took some little trips to the outer edge of the city. On Friday in the afternoon we went up to the Piazza Michelangelo. This is a large terrace just on the south side of the town. It is on a pretty good size hill and it overlooks Florence. It gives and absolutely gorgeous view of the city center of Florence. From our apartment it was a nice walk across the Arno River and up the hillside. The stairs/path, up to the Plaza, wind back and forth up the hill with fountains and great views along the way. Once you reach the Plaza you can see the Bronze copy of the David by Michelangelo. The panoramic view of Florence surrounded by the rolling hills of Tuscany is absolutely amazing. This relatively small city is completely surrounded by these hills and their green lawns and grape vines. These hills by the way would be called mountains in Indiana but with the Alps not too far to the north these certainly seem like mere hills here. After taking in the view for a while we continued further up the hill to the Chiesa San Miniato. This is an extremely old church where monks do Gregorian chants. From this church you have an even higher view down at Florence and you can see the Arno River snaking through the hills and into the city. You can see the Duomo, Bell Tower, and Baptistry reaching high above any other building in the city; and they immediately catch your eye because, unlike the browns and tans and pale yellows of the other buildings, they are green and white marble (at least the restored parts). You can see that Santa Croce is only marble on the very front side of the building and that the rest is simply brown stone because of the short period of time when Florence was the capitol of Italy and the Romans changed how some of the churches looked. It is a must for anyone spending time in Firenze.

On Saturday we took another trip out of the city center to a small town called Fiesole on the north side of Florence. It is a 25 minute bus ride out of town. After living in the always crowded and very noisy city of Florence for a week, we certainly wanted to escape to the serenity of the hills again. Fiesole offers the same panoramic views of the Florence city center. It is a little more removed than Piazza Michelangelo and offers some walking paths through the countryside. We packed our lunch for this trip, salads, cheese, bread, and wine and set out on a walking trail to find a picnic spot. The path we took was called Via San Francesco and immediately it was headed at a steep incline. We were not just walking at this point but rather hiking up this hill. All five of us were struggling a little to climb it but were soon embarrassed when a little old lady, who could not have been a day younger than 85, comes walking easily up the hill past us. We stopped complaining and picked up the pace from that point. All along the way up the hill we saw terraces where we could stop and take in the scenery around us. (We stayed and caught our breath really.) After walking up to the top of the hill and part of the way back down the other side we found a perfect picnic spot looking out away from the city and further into rural Tuscany. It was quiet and had an amazing view. After lunch we walked back into the center of Fiesole and had amazing gelato. The place was called il Tucano, which means The Toucan. It was most certainly the best I have had since I have been here and to what I will compare all future gelato. After a beautiful day in the hills we sat in the sun and waited for the bus back into town.

I came home and made a dinner of eggplant, yellow peppers, and carrots steamed with table wine and chicken. (The only meat I buy at the grocery store is chicken because it is the only one that I recognize and feel comfortable preparing.)

It was a beautiful Tuscan weekend I had!