Appenine Hills, Lucca, Pisa, Tuscany

The lowland plains around Venice are hot in the summer and we retreated again to the mountains – this time the Appenines on the border of Tuscany and Reggio Emilia. A campsite was at 1000m elevation and consisted of a series of terraces on a hillside, mainly funny little permanent chalets but a nice site was waiting for us looking out over the surrounding countryside. The land is very brown houses all shuttered up, the hills in the distance shrouded in a pale blue haze.

The camp man told us about a walk to a lake and Stuart bought some horrible polystyrene bread rolls from the camp shop to take with us on the hike. Two hours there and two back on a steep stoney path, we passed no one. Half way was a refugio with a solid steel door and concrete doorframe. All the windows tightly shuttered, no one was going to get into that hut uninvited.

The lake was showing signs of the hot weather, and the tide was low in places, there were some large fish in the lake with big mouths open to catch bread thrown by visitors. Yes, there were people who had actually driven up and strolled across to the cafe. We took advantage and had capuccinos, this being our closest substitute for a flat white.

After our walk we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the restaurant in the camp, it is a large camp and had its own bar and restaurant. Scrubbed up, tidy as best we could only to find – “chiuso” (closed). Monday the restaurant is closed. Deflated, Stu bought some more polystyrene buns and we made hamburgers instead. We had a bun left over - I used it to stop some bottles rattling in the locker under a bench seat.

Tuesday, looking forward to pizza for a change, we presented ourselves again at the restaurant. “It is Tuesday, pizza is on Wednesday”. Oh – we chose a dish each and a shared starter from the menu. Something was lost in translation and I am still trying to erase the memory of the tough little pork schnitzel that I thought was beef ragu from my mind. There was only one other other table of diners, a Dutch couple; after we decided not to tempt fate with any dolci (dessert) we stood at the door as the first rain in 3 weeks hammered down. The Dutch couple thought they would wait it out and could they have coffee please. “Coffee is served at the bar next door, not the restaurant.” It is Tuesday, the bar is closed!

While staying in the camp we heard the sad news that our friend Mike had passed away in the weekend, we had been thinking of him and Morag while we were away.

Lucca, lovely Lucca was next on the agenda. An uneventful drive took us to an aire within easy walking distance to this gem. It is a walled town, even a double set of walls, that managed to get through the wars unscathed by bombs. Extremely elegant, it has enjoyed a prosperous past and had some lovely boutique shops and hotels. We did the 4km circuit on top of the walls that would have held 3 lanes of traffic if allowed. There were shade trees, a feeling of tranquility and being up high gave you a good view of the gardens below.

Lucca

Time to go. Pisa is only half an hour away. After an early morning cycle in Lucca around the walls and then through the town, we dumped the toilet, retrieved our parking ticket from our rubbish bin and inserted it into the payment machine. I feel uneasy when inserting actual folding money into machines but this one seemed to make the right noises and spat out a crisp E10 as change.

The barrier machine (something else I have a dread and mistrust of) sucked the ticket in and the barrier refused to raise. The machine flashed red. I tried talking into the machine and couldn’t understand the reply. An Italian man also bent over double, speaking to the disembodied voice in the machine on my behalf told me “a man is coming soon”. By this time we were the big white box just behind the barrier arm with 3 other big white boxes nose to tail behind us. Eventually the parking man arrived and let us all out. I suspect it might have had something to do with the grease from the rubbish on the parking ticket plus the scribbling on the back – still - ‘who can tell?”

Pisa, the leaning tower and all. Peeved off with Pisa – too many tourists, too far to walk, too much driving around trying to leave the place, too much that looked like Penrose/Mt Wellington. The only highlight was the little guided tour a law student provided when we got lost.

Volterra made up for Pisa – we toured the hilltop town after leaving Chausson with his white box mates at the bottom of the hill. The views across the countryside were very Tuscan but shrouded with a smokey haze – I think the summer has gone on too long and they need some good downpours to clear the air. Volterra can be put on the ‘big tick’ list.

Monteriggioni, less said the better. Was a nice little town once but little is the operative word and greedy is the second.

The route to Montepulciano in Tuscany was a bit rough, the roads were in poor shape but we made it to the aire unscathed physically. The aire was on the side of a hill with fabulous views of the surrounding countryside. Tuscan pines and pencil cedars, large square golden-stone farmhouses and rows of purpely/grey olive trees interspersed between vineyards. The vines had been pruned and we could see bunches of dark black grapes discarded on the ground so the remaining fruit would be larger and juicier.

Montepulciano, Tuscany

Montepulciano rates up there as one of my top Italian towns, not quite like Lucca but good in its own right. There were a couple of shops that had unexpected basements open to the public showing the remains of settlements dating back to Etruscan times. These underground chambers were many metres and levels below ground level - a wool scouring room, olive press, burial chamber, carpenter shop had been excavated and were open for the public to roam through.

Stuart found an excellent bottle of 2012 Tuscan chardonnay, of the type we used to get in NZ, too bad we only bought one. He has also found the ease of travelling on the motorways. The price to pay is tolls, Sunday on the motorway however is a special treat – no trucks.

We drove towards the Aosta valley and Nazionale del Gran Paradiso Parc, near the Swiss and French borders. It was hot and dusty in Tuscany so the mountains would be nice again. As a stopover I chose an aire close to the motorway in a ‘town worth visiting’ - even so I was shocked and amazed to find this concrete carpark stuffed to the gunwales with 115 Italian motorhomes – with one GB (us), two Germans and one Austrian. The town was pretty with a castle surrounded by a moat in the centre but it didn’t explain its popularity. Such are the mysteries of life.