Twenty-two days of one journey. Day five
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It is not even 10 am yet, and we are in “full combat” - a pool, a shower, breakfast, things are packed. I repeat, or rather, I will say this: camping is not inferior to many 3-star hotels, remember!
I set the address of the end point of today's trip in the navigator - Tuscany, Pomarance, "Agriturismo Santa Chiara".
Leaving Veneto, ahead of Emilia-Romagna, which should appear immediately in the middle of the Po River in front of Ferrara. And so it happened (Google helped capture this wonderful moment).
But that's later, but for now, obeying the voice of the navigator, we slowly reached for the exit from Margera towards Padua along the E70 to the A13 - even for a baby it's easy. However, ten minutes later, after incomprehensible turns and U-turns, a sign "Venice" 12 km appeared in front of us,
this happened one more time. Garmin took us to Tuscany, but with an obligatory stop in Venice (he wasn't there). I had to turn off the restless and follow the signs, as in the old days.
It is very easy to drive without navigation in Italy if you use a toll road. The main thing is to know where you are going, signs and road signs at the congress help. On provincial roads it is a little more difficult, there is little information about the direction, often only the nearest city is indicated.
Having left the A13 highway almost in front of Bologna, he carefully turned on the navigator, he was "offended" and was silent until we drove along the A1 towards Florence. . .
. . . behind which he successfully "pushed" us off the toll road at the nearest checkpoint and led us along the "paths" known only to him. We did not resist, there was very little left to go, but Tuscany opened in all its glory.
Olive orchards,
vineyards, fields with already mowed grain, alleys with tall cypresses leading to farmsteads, churches around which ancient houses of stones, rarely plastered, are located. In every, even the smallest village, there is a restaurant or a trattoria, a pizzeria or a cafe, a grocery store "negozio di alimentari" or simply "alimentary", and where there are vegetables and fruits - "frutta e verdura". Lots of signs selling "vendesi" or renting "affittare". There are a lot of tourists everywhere, cars with license plates of all European countries, starting from Norway. But probably half of the tourists are from Japan and China, they are recognizable the first time.
Many times I wanted to stay in a town or village, for example in this one - San Casciano in Val di Pesa, where Nicolo Machiavelli lived.
But this is almost impossible - parking lots for three to five cars are occupied, sidewalks are up to a meter wide, the width of the roadway is no more than four meters, and,
Naturally, signs prohibiting even thinking about stopping, not to mention parking. Therefore, seeing the sign "P"...
. . . turned, became - the marking lines are white - that is, completely free. The town was called Barberino Val d'Elsa.
It turned out to be quite famous and ancient, the revered and read poet Andrea de Mengabotti was born in it.
Founded 800 years ago, located in the famous Chianti Valley. We entered the town through the Siena Gate (Porta Senese).
On the right is the city hall with many coats of arms.
And across the road, back to the city hall, the church of San Bartolomeo. . .
. . . that is, St. Bartholomew, leaving which through the main entrance we saw this - Tuscany, the Chianti Valley:
The old part of the city is quite small - 5 minutes walk and the whole city is passed.
There is a restaurant, the tables are set.
Maybe they are waiting for guests, maybe just anyone who is hungry (the city, like many others, hosts a food festival in June, as advertised).
You can buy a house in a 700-year-old house:
We found out how much - 160 thousand euros, three rooms. In tourist centers, you cannot buy such an apartment for less than 300 thousand euros, but they are within easy reach.
If we had stopped in another village (Borgo), the result would have been exactly the same. In Italy there is no city, village, uninteresting, unoriginal, which has not preserved its sights from prehistoric times or from the Roman Empire.
We drove along Colle di Val d'Elsa, which was on the list of visits, it produces 15% of the crystal in the world, a large crystal museum, and in this city Carlo Collodi wrote the book The Adventures of Pinocchio, which A. Tolstoy plagiarized with impunity.
There was a five-minute stop in San Dalmazio (San Dalmazio) for a bite to eat - everything is closed,
but we walked a hundred meters along this village and saw a sign on the house of some Serafina - Garibaldi lived here, if I was not mistaken, only a couple of days. Too bad the smartphone was left in the car.
We drove Orange and after two or three kilometers we drove into the courtyard of the Santa Chiara farm.
This is one of more than one and a half million farms in Italy, all the work is done only by family members (in this case, these are five men and two women - the head of the family with his wife, the eldest son with his wife and two sons 16 and 17 years old, the youngest owner's son). They are engaged in the cultivation of wheat, grapes, vegetables, there is an olive garden and agro-tourism.
The building is large, two-storey, has five or six rooms for guests, a real reception desk, a dining area with six tables for four and one huge table for twenty people. Breakfasts are included in the price (70 euros), lunches 20 euros per person. The room is big
everything is new, the cleanliness is perfect (for us, this is the main thing in any accommodation), there is a refrigerator, there is no air conditioning, as in most Italian houses built of stone.
Why "agrotourismo", you ask? And I will answer you: silence, nature, communication with real Italians (it was not in vain that I learned Italian), acquaintance and communication with guests from different countries, and this was an elderly couple from Lyon, a young family with two children from Liverpool, newlyweds from Glasgow and another couple from Holland (judging by the car numbers, we didn’t get to know each other). Everyone came in their cars! The French have already been invited to visit, I answered them the same. I must note that it is difficult to rent a house in such houses during the season, Europeans have long preferred them to five-star hotels, just like me.
A fairly large pool, where you can hear cackling and grunting while swimming, as well as see Volterra on a distant hill and a horse,
grazing from morning to evening.
All the products grown here are organic, and breakfasts and lunches are prepared from them - this is another reason to settle on a farm.
“Eat breakfast yourself, share lunch with a friend, give dinner to an enemy” - this is not about Italians, their enemies go hungry, I think that their friends too. Lunch starts after 20.00 (after 19.00 throughout Italy), before that all restaurants, trattorias, etc. are closed from 13.00.
Food in Italy can become a separate topic for travel - the simplicity, variety, quality and taste of dishes are amazing. On the day of arrival, we ordered lunch. I'll just tell you, I didn't take pictures. For two: a dozen tiny black bread sandwiches and three types of raw meat, a huge bowl of pasta (we ate it all without blinking), then a liter bottle of homemade red wine and a dozen steaks with a total weight of about 1 kg with greens and a mountain of vegetables. This is how Italy welcomed us.
At 6 in the morning, the owner plows the field on a tractor, and according to my calculations, the land is about 20 hectares, others prepare breakfast for the guests, others do something in the vineyard, take manure to the field, clean the pool. The working day ends around midnight and so all my life - "nessun giorno libero" - no days off. Our villagers also work without these very days off, but at the end they have a fig without oil and a bunch of sores that there is nothing to treat. And our land is ten times better, only people have forgotten how to work and be masters of their own land. You have to go, watch and learn, visa-free is just right for this - we thought so, returning to the room after drinking a liter. That's it, the day is over, tomorrow Volterra and San Gimignano.
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