Sunday 19th September

 

19/04/04 Day 78

Heather: For me, we seemed like Tuscany - living on a sleepy olive tree meadow a few km out of San G., with a scrabble picnic of Greek salad, bread, cheese bean pâté, biscuits, olives, yogurt, and of course a bottle of wine. It wasn't just a little too idyllic - not a sound except for the crickets and hoarse wasps, and a perfect view over what must be one of the most picturesque areas of the world. Sleepy and dreamy is Tuscany - there's not much more to it than that. The hill top houses look shut up and asleep all day long, nobody except tourists are on the roads, and nobody seems to mind you strolling around the grapevines and olive trees which take over 80% of the grassy rolling hills. The pace takes very highly on my top 10 moments.

We must have looked very strange wandering off into the wilderness with a huge backpack - purely to accommodate our picnic. We met two people on the way and there were these unsure moments where we could have general chat or something with a "buongiorno" or "morning" but we weren't quite sure which one. The roads we wandered along were all gravel. At first we failed to find our perfect picnic spot, but we persisted through the thistles and thorns and through vines heavy with fat juicy grapes. I could literally describe every sight but I will just say that the views were mouth watering. Everything you looked was even more beautiful and it somehowled (NB buildings in Tuscany have terraces built into the outer wall so that you are never far from a great eating place).

Had shoved a photo/painting upfront of your eye. I hope the doctor we took will explain the day. The picnic was rather grand and the perfect way to do Tuscany. By the end though I was beginning to feel the loneliness - each hill had just two houses on it and the villages/towns seemed so far apart that the quietness of the country would eventually become stifling. You also get the impression that the resident had no idea about what was going on in the rest of Italy, let alone the world - only their own community. Our homemade ice cream was fabulous and confirmed that the Italians make the best ice cream. We sounded the alarm clock back a bit by witnessing someone else in exchange for a squizz at our rail timetable. So that all worked out fine. And that was it for our last day in Bella Toscana.