We spent the second week of July in the Chianti region of Tuscany where every vista was of rolling hills covered with carefully tendered grape vines and olive trees. We had a small apartment on the property of a major wine producer in the town of Castellini in Chianti.
Castellina proved to be the most beautiful of the towns in the Chianti area. The buildings were substantial and beautifully restored and maintained.
The castle in the piazza looked staggeringly beautiful in its nighttime lighting.
And someone has converted an ape into a gelati van. Check out the lights on top - usually seen only on Australian utes for rabbit shooting.
Sienna was only about 35km so we wandered up for a late afternoon stroll. It was during the second of the two major European heatwaves and it was hot - 38 degrees every day. No cars allowed in the city centre so we parked just inside one of the four main gates in the ancient city walls.
Funnily enough Piazza del Campo looked exactly as it had when we first visited 20 years ago.
Il Campo is filled with soil twice every year for the Palio horse race where ten horses and riders represent ten of the seventeen contrada or wards of the city. The race itself, in which the jockeys ride bareback, circles the Piazza del Campo for three laps and usually lasts no more than 90 seconds. It is common for a few of the jockeys to be thrown off their horses while making the treacherous turns in the piazza, and it is not unusual to see riderless horses finishing the race.
The Palazzo Pubblico dominates the piazza. Its Torre del Mangia is so tall it is difficult to get all of it into the photo.
Each of the contrada has its own decorations which seem mostly to be colourful ceramic street lights. Rows of these along the narrow streets looked stunning.
From Tuscany we moved north to Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region where Paul spent three days doing things related to Ferraris and other exotically named motor vehicles. No pictures as I stayed at the hotel reading novels. It was still exhaustingly hot.
Our next move was to drive east to Rubano, on the outskirts of Padua, 45 km west of Venice. No fancy cars here but there was a fancy restaurant called Le Calandre, currently No.15 in the world.
This combination of five vegetable, fish, seafood and meat mouthfuls, served on a sheet of glass was stunning.
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