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Italy Through a Golden EyeA Quick Trip with a Tuscan and Umbrian FocusBy Nancy KrabillLanding in sun-drenched Italy soothes even the most jet-lagged souls. Cruising down the Autostrada and diverting down side roads when the mood strikes is the reward for navigating the Milan airport car rental counter and its maze of airport exits. We started to unwind when the sunburnt sienna and ochre hues of the impossibly beautiful landscape began to unfurl before us: every moment a photo-op, a movie set, but it’s real and just keeps on coming.
We wrapped up our tour in lovely Roma: dazzling, but ultimately not engaging. We’re home now, and mourn that the recent Italian meal we had at a popular restaurant fell so short of the most humble fare in Italy. Here’s what we hope we learned: to love in the moment, to live simply, and to taste each drop of life. Here’s what we plan to do: go back and delve deeper next year! Recommendations:Modena: Acetaia del Christo http://www.acetaiadelcristo.it/ Osteria Giusti, vicolo Squallore 46, Modena. tel: 39-059-222533. Siena: Hotel: Best Western Palazzo Dei Priori, Via Montalbuccio Siena, Italy I-53100 Rooms around 80e/night tel: 39 0577 398701 Market: Wednesday mornings in the historic district Daniele’s Tuscan villa for rental: www.i-camini.it Note: We weren’t thrilled with our accommodations in Modena, Orvieto, or Rome. All were clean and cheap but not worth repeating. The Best Western in Siena was perfect – believe it or not! |
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TM
My
husband and I took a ten-day trip to Italy this early July and packed in enough
memories and material to last a lifetime – or until our next journey. We went
with the crazy idea of meeting real people, learning more about why it is we
love the Italian culinary lifestyle, and diving a couple of levels back into the
distribution foodchain to find some “killer app” (to coin a term from our
telecom days) ceramics and linens to import back home and sell in our store in
Dallas. We fussed, roamed the Internet, I actually packed ahead for the first
time in my life; all were good things to do. However, our experience could not
have been engineered in advance; it had everything to do with the openness and
generosity of the people we met, rather than the timelines and trajectories in
our itinerary. 
Our
first stop was Modena, home to real Balsamic vinegar and our first tour of an
aceteia where glorious barrels of the fumy, fusty, wonderful stuff have stood
for centuries, silently aging. Acetaia del Christo, run by the Barbieri family
outside of Italy, melds the latest in stainless-steel technology with ancient,
family-run physical plant. Here Gilberto spent an hour or two showing us around
the various batteria, or rows of barrels in which the vinegar is aged, and
finished us off with a taste of creamy Italian gelato topped by a balsamic
vinegar aged in cherry wood for 12 years. That’s right – vinegar on ice cream:
fabuloso! 
The
next morning, before moving on, we strolled the historic piazza and stopped at
Guisti’s: a restaurant, a wine cellar, a food shop, and a coffee bar. On a
friend’s recommendation, we met Nano, the owner, who graciously showed us around
his restaurant (4 tables, 4 stars, and reservations in advance a foregone
requirement) and treated us to a cup of espresso. Right next door at the
military academy students marched and trained; an odd juxtaposition with the
ways of the world that are not so new. 
Next,
we settled into Siena, our favorite city of the stay. The campo, a central open
area enclosed with palazzos from the 13th century, hums with life in the evening
(if you’re lucky like us, at Midnight, the neighborhood winner of the Palio
parades around the campo, singing, drumming, and chanting – from another age).
We went to the Wednesday morning market, ogling the sensuous reds, yellows, and
purples of vegetables and fruit; trying to look past the poor pig’s head perched
atop its back as layers of steaming pork was cut in curls and packaged to send
home. We bought silly stuff, fun linens for the store, and picnicked in the
parking lot with the spoils. 
Our
most memorable Tuscan day was spent with “Carolina” and “Tomasso” Adair, who
live most of the year in College Station, but we think they find their true
identity here; in their mountain home in Saltino, in their olive grove, and in
their tiny guest house, a former mill near Figline Valdarno. Carolina, a
stranger until a week or so prior, spent the day with us, showed off this
beautiful part of the world; from the tiny thumbnail-sized hummingbirds to the
vast expanse of the Arno Valley below her very own olive grove. We saw a family
villa that their friend, Daniele, has lovingly restored with authenticity,
taste, and modern conveniences. (It rents for 1000e a week; the idyll is
free.) Then, to top it off, Tomasso fixed our first taste of a Tuscan lunch:
“simple” but so full of flavor, with fresh pesto, zucchini, pasta, bread, wine,
vin santo……It was a dream. 
On
to Umbria, land of rich clay and sinuous ceramic design. Our fears of “where to
find the ceramics” were baseless. All around you, in town after town, Gubbio,
Deruta, Perugia, Orvieto were stores with windows full of the stuff. Deruta is
the mother lode; here you find actual people painting plates in each store –
actual people! Gorgeous canisters, mountainous vases proclaiming “olive oil!”
or “limoncello!”… Humble vases, rolling plates, oil and vinegar cruets, all
became almost commonplace. Almost, until we met Luca at Ceramiche Fanny. His
designs incorporate the traditional Deruta elements; the grotesques, the almost
Arabic motifs, but with bright reds, blues, and yellows that put me in the mind
of the lovely Sistine chapel as it was originally painted; not muted and mild,
but shouting with color, dimension, and style. We loved the difference, and
were in the midst of placing our order when we met his new friend Sheri, an
artist with a focus on portraiture, with whom he plans to collaborate on new
designs. Luca invited us all to lunch, and we again fell under the spell of a
seemingly interminable Italian afternoon. We had pasta with truffles, sausages,
steak, wine, even Baci ice cream! The simplicity and honesty of the meal, the
talk, the ingredients, brought us together.
