Tuscany

When is an acceptable time of day to drink wine? Well, apparently its 11 am if you're staying in the grounds of a castle in the Tuscan hills with its own vineyard and wine cellar, especially when they happen to produce some particularly fine chianti classicos. Surely it'd be rude not to?

But in our defence, when the view from your stunning apartment looks like this from one side...



..and this from the other..



And the view from the poolside, just meters from your door, looks like this...



We could hardly be blamed for getting carried away with this most idyllic holiday setting.

So Ruth and I went to Tuscany on the pretence that I had a conference I was presenting at. We both jumped at the opportunity to make the most of the only few days holiday we're going to get for a long while, and so went a few days early so we could take some time out to relax before the conference started.

We flew in to Pisa, so it made sense to spend a touristy first day eating ice-cream, looking in tacky souvenir shops, and taking photos in front of bizarre architectural anomalies.

So yeah, The Leaning Tower. Amazingly and quite surprisingly, it really does actually lean. Its only when you get in viewing distance of the thing you stand back and think "wow, that's really .. errr... wrong.", and then curse as you see you've blobbed yet more ice-cream down your front when you've not been looking. Note to self: don't wear white when visiting tourist attractions.

On closer inspection of course, you discover its disgustingly infested with t-o-u-r-i-s-t-s (cos like, we don't count as tourists oursleves of course), who are all taking *amusing* pictures for the folks back home. Cue: comedy scenes of en masse Tai Chi, with people swarming over the nearby surrounds looking for the right angle to look like they're holding up/leaning on,/pushing over the tower in C-O-M-E-D-Y photo poses. Oh those crazy crazy kids. Naturally the thought to do something similar hadn't at all crossed my mind.

Disappointingly, and somewhat ironically though, all of the snow globe shakers on sale had particularly straight and upright Leaning Towers. Which just seemed plain wrong.

The highlight of that day was discovering on our way to catch our train on to Siena that I had managed to lose the single most important thing I had to ensure the safety of for the entire trip (after my passport) ....my scientific presentation poster ..i.e. the whole excuse, I mean, reason for our being in Italy in the first place. Thankfully I managed to cadge together enough Italian to ask the bemused toilet attendant (a very pleasant and seemingly wholey amused old man) if he'd found my long cylinderical tube. My gesticulations and mimes generating exceedingly amused smiles from the very large queue of people behind me.

The smug: I-know-where-my-poster-is, shot.

So after we'd done the obligatory tourist bit, we eagerly found our way to our 16th century castle-come-vineyard in the Tuscan hills east of Siena. And for three days we did n-o-t-h-i-n-g. Not a single thing, save for feeding oursleves, and getting up to replace the vino when it ran dry. This was just what we needed. And the pace of life certainly suited the landscape of sleepy peaceful vineyards & olive groves as far as the eye can see.. the late-summer sunshine.. and the fragrant aromas of rosemary, lavender and mint being carried on the breeze. Sigh. Buuuut, seeing as I was there to actually "work", after three nights there, we headed in to the city of Siena so that I could attend my conference.

Siena, even so late in the tourist season (late September) was fairly heaving with tourists, but the crowds and the noise seemed fitting once the sun went down and the historic central plaza came to life with people, much as it no doubt has done for centuries.

Of course the conference itself was very interesting, and unfortunately I came back with far more Bright Ideas for my research than I have neither time nor money for, but its definitely reassuring to be surrounded by others so geekily in to your own subject matter. The droppings of wild animals are a surprisingly niche interest. Go figure...

The only thing about Italy I thought was an exciting novelty at first, but which soon gave way to despair, was the food. Or rather more accurately: the lack of anything that wasn't bread, tomato and cheese based. Which for me as a carnivorous type, soon lost its appeal. Although their was at least one of us who never looked so happy than when she had a pizza slice the size of her head in front of her ;)