Trip number six from the UAE was once again to old Europe – the Tuscany region and the isle of Elba in Italy.  We made some effort on this trip to limit our lodging moves, settling for stays at two locations (plus a spontaneous last night stay at San Gimignano).  We delayed making our reservations for various reasons and did not have as many choices as we otherwise might have.  But we still found some fine spots.  In another mystery of airline travel, it was cheaper to fly round trip to Pisa with a Rome connection than it was to fly to Rome directly.  Our itinerary included three days outside of Pisa to explore a bit of Tuscany and Florence, then four days on the island of Elba just off the western coast. Thinking our agenda would be off the beaten path at times, we chose to get a rental car. Some facts and interesting trivia about Italy:

• Most of the Italian peninsula unified into its current state in 1861.
• Italy is the 8^th largest country measured by nominal GDP with a 2017 GDP of 2.1 trillion US dollars. It is 23^rd in population with 61 million (2017), and 71^st in area (about the size of Arizona).
• Italy is the 5^th most visited country.
• Paleolithic-era artifacts have been found on the peninsula dating back 850,000 years. Modern humans appeared about 40,000 years ago.
• Almost 10 million Prosciutti di Parma hams are produced in Italy each year; approximately 70% of them are consumed in Italy.
• The Renaissance, a period of vigorous revival of the arts and culture, originated in Italy due to a number of factors: the great wealth accumulated by merchant cities, the patronage of its dominant families, and the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Conquest of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.
• Italy is the world’s largest producer of wine, producing 3.3 million bottles (20% of global total). Italians consume an average of 54 liters per person each year.
• Roman Catholicism is the leading religion at 74%.
• In 1962, Italy passed a law banning names with superlatives (such as super-, and ultra-) for consumer products. Supercrema, invented by Italian Michele Ferrero, had to be renamed. And Nutella was born.
• The top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa is 17 feet off vertical.
• There are over 450 pasta shapes in Italy.
• The average person in Italy eats more than 51 pounds of pasta every year compared to about 15-1/2 pounds per year in North America.
• Pizza as we know it today evolved in the 18th century when tomatoes were introduced to southern Italy.
• Italy produces over 450 varieties of cheese, over 100 more than in France.
• Italians invented the typewriter, optical eye glasses, piano, and espresso machine.
• Italy is home to the only three active volcanos in Europe: Etna, Stromboli and Vesuvius.
• Italy is home to the oldest University in the world in continuous operation. The University of Bologna was founded in 1088 and has been open ever since.
• Galileo Galilei was arrested nearly 400 years ago by the Roman Catholic Church for having proved the earth moves around the sun and not the other way around. The Church did not issue a formal apology until 1992.
• Exchange rate at the time of this trip was 1€ = $1.16.

We started our trip in the usual manner, spending the night at the Park Inn on Yas Island ($91) to take advantage of free parking in a covered garage while on vacation.  Our flight the morning of September 6 to Pisa was uneventful, and we arrived in Pisa in the mid-afternoon. Our rental car was a 5-speed manual transmission Opel Corsa rented through Eurocar.  At $210 for 9 days, including the max insurance package, I thought this was a real bargain.  Getting the optional navigation system would have added another $14/day, so we opted to just use Google Map.  Except for a snafu trying to navigate on some minor roads in Elba, this worked quite well.  We were happy with Eurocar and have no reservation with using them again.

We moved on to our rental for the next three days, Agriturismo La Volta just outside Pisa (275€ for three nights, including cleaning fee). An ‘agriturismo’ is an Italian term formally regulated since 1985 where guests can stay at family owned farms. I figured this was to preserve some sort of farm-based tax benefits but I did not research it further.  Our residence was one of several in what seemed to be a larger estate.  A tour guide we used later speculated that it was formerly a residence of nobility, that seemed to fit.  It certainly was charming.  Large rooms, simply provisioned but comfortable and with a full kitchen, good Wi-Fi, and a dining table outside between wisteria cloaked walls.  There was a good-sized backyard with large oak, sycamore, cottonwood, and palm trees, and vineyards in the surrounding fields. This worked well for us as a home base for our Tuscany adventures.  Our hosts, an elderly couple with limited English, left us with a bottle of local wine.  Much of this trip was in areas with limited English speakers outside of the major tourist attractions. We got by as best we could.  Trying to read the menus may have been the biggest impact.  We ended our first day with a fun trip to a small local grocery where we set ourselves up for the next few days with yogurt, espresso coffee (the only type of coffee maker we had during our entire Italy stay), plums, eggs, bread, and beer.

Our first full day in Italy, September 7, we planned to visit Florence.  They had an egg cup in our kitchen, so I tried my hand at soft boiled eggs for breakfast. I think I have this figured out.  Breakfast outdoors was pleasant.  We had a 10-minute drive to the train station.  We figured out the system without much problem and paid 7.8€ each for the train to downtown Florence. The train was punctual, clean, and comfortable, and electric, as they have been throughout Europe. There were lots of pickpocket warnings throughout this trip, but we never had any problems.

We arrived in downtown Florence after a pleasant train ride through the Italian country side of olive gardens, sunflower fields, houses, towns, wind turbines, and sorghum fields.  We bought a small city map, got our bearings, then headed to our first stop of the day, the Galleria degli Uffizi (24€ each).  We spent the morning here, admiring many classic paintings and sculptures from such masters as Botticelli, Raphael, da Vinci, Michelangelo, and many others. This really was an astounding collection of art. We kidded about it reminding us of playing the game Masterpiece with the kids growing up.  They used to make fun of it being a ‘pretentious’ game.

After visiting the Uffizi, we found a plaza with outdoor restaurants, and had a beer and monster calzone before moving on to the Central Market.  Several shops were closed for the day after lunch, but others were still open with lots of prosciutto, cheeses, sausages, fruits and vegetables.  We killed some time there before showing up for our appointed time at Galleria dell’ Accademia (12€ each).  There are many interesting art items here as well (including several incomplete Michelangelo sculptures) but certainly the primary draw here is Michelangelo’s sculpture of David. Completed in 1504, he carved this 17-foot statue from a single piece of marble. He was only 26 years old when he was commissioned for the work and spent over the next two years devoted to it.  The result was so fluent and graceful that contemporary Giorgio Vasari stated the statue so far surpassed any other work in beauty and technique, both ancient and modern, that one needn’t bother with seeing other sculptures. I admired the amazing difference between some partially completed works of his and the final product to see his ability to bring a piece of stone to life.

The next morning, September 8, was our food tour day.  What a fun day this turned out to be!  Seeing a Parmesan cheese factory was on my list of things to see, and Lynn found – somewhere – a full day tour that included a Parmesan cheese factory, a Prosciutto ham factory, and a balsamic vinegar producing vineyard.  This delightful tour was led by a native Tuscan, Angelo Fanzini. He personally designs and leads these tours and has one other business partner in England that handles the bookings.  His English was excellent, and he was extremely knowledgeable about everything we saw.  His knowledge was so complete and his access to operating spaces on the tours was so free that I at first assumed he must be an employee.  This wasn’t a cheap tour – 148€ ($171) – but for anyone interested in such a tour, it’s hard for me to believe there is a better choice out there.

We left Pisa in our rental car and headed to Parma for the first stop in the food tour.  We were a little surprised by how close the Italian Alps were to the coast.  One notable landmark we passed on the way was the Carrera marble quarry, with huge blocks of marble visible in quarry yards on the left and right as we drove through.  Marble from these quarries was used by Michelangelo to carve David from. Our first stop for the day was “Consorzio Produttori Latte”, a Protected Destination of Origin Parmigiano Reggiano cheese producer.  We met Angelo at the factory and were joined by one other young couple from New York City.  It was a nice small tour group for the day.  We donned disposable lab coat, hair net, and booties and headed off for our tour.  Over the next hour and a half, he led us through the entire process of cheese production. He was a wealth of knowledge.  Some interesting statistics about the cheese:

• About 3000 dairies provide milk to 340 Parmesan cheese factories that operate as co-operatives to share risks, liabilities, profits, labor, etc.
• The milk is delivered as a priority – all is delivered from the dairy farms within two hours of milking, 365 days a year.
• The Parmesan wheels seen in grocery stores start off around 50 kg, lowering to 36 kg on average after aging for 1 -3+ years. They cannot be sold as Parmigiano Reggiano without aging at least one year.
• The wheels are routinely inspected and tested for quality during the aging process. About 93% pass through the aging process with the top grade. Lesser quality wheels can still be used, but with restrictions, including having the name Parmigiano Reggiano entirely removed for the lowest grade.
• All the wheels in the factory – thousands of them stacked on racks to the ceiling – are inspected, cleaned, and turned over every week.
• Nothing is wasted from the factory. The left-over whey is first centrifuged to remove remaining cream that is sold for various uses such as making gelato. The whey that is left is fed to pigs. Angelo said they had the fattest, happiest pigs around.
• The first cheese producers were monks. Along with breads, wine, beer – society really owes monks a debt!

We ended the cheese part of our tour with a visit to the gift shop, and samples of 1, 2, and 3-year-old cheese and some beer from a local brewery that hires disadvantaged people and donates profits to charity.  We bought a block of 3-year-old cheese to bring home, cost about $9/lb.

From there, we got in our cars and took about a 20-minute drive to the prosciutto ham factory, Piazza Peppino.  None of the places we visited were large compared to other manufacturers, but Anthony felt they represented high quality, traditional enterprises, and we certainly saw nothing to make us disagree.  We arrived and met the owners, who chatted with us briefly (and with limited English), then they let Anthony take over.  He certainly seemed to have a friendly, trusting relationship with all the owners we met over the course of the day because he sure seemed to have free reign to walk around and look at anything of interest.  He walked us through the process from start to finish, from the salt rubbing process and aging rooms, to the final steps where the inspector inserts a sharpened horse bone tool into the ham at 5 locations. Horse bones are porous in such a way that they pick up smells but lose them within seconds. Some fun facts we learned from Angelo during this tour:

• 4000 pig farmers provide 118 prosciutto curing houses in five Destination of Origin regions.
• Only sea salt is used in curing. The hams are maintained refrigerated at 2-5° Centigrade for the first four months. In pre-refrigeration days, this was accomplished by starting the curing process in late fall/early winter.
• Hams must be cured for a minimum of 12 months to earn the designation of Prosciutto.
• Full hams are between 9-12 kg on average after losing about 30% of their weight in curing.

As with the cheese tour, this tour ended with generous samples of their final product.  As long as we were eating, they kept providing, along with some crackers and a local white wine to cleanse the pallet.

Angelo took us to lunch at a lovely hilltop restaurant, with a view spanning over Tuscany. We enjoyed a local Lambrusco with our meal.  The road leading to the restaurant was a two-lane road but seemed like little more than a glorified golf cart path.  We saw these many times during this tour. These would not work well with typical American automobiles.  We also observed far fewer red lights, replaced with rotaries.

After lunch, we went to the last stop, a balsamic vinegar producer that is part of the Medici Ermete vineyard family. It’s not fair to call this a factory since the entire operation is on essentially a family farm that has been producing balsamic vinegar for five generations. The entire operation takes place in two small buildings.  Angelo again walked us through the entire process with complete authority.  Unlike wine where contact with oxygen is avoided, balsamic vinegar requires oxidation.  The barrels seem similar to wine barrels but are left open at top with an air space in the barrel to keep air in contact with the vinegar and to allow evaporation to occur which improves the flavor.  A simple sheet of cheesecloth is kept over the opening to keep dust and debris from getting in the barrels.  The process begins with a mother barrel, then using five barrels of decreasing size for ageing of the vinegar.  Evaporative losses are made up in series beginning with filling the smallest barrel from the next smallest, then continuing in sequence with the fifth barrel losses being made up from the mother barrel. The final product is the result of a twelve year minimum fermentation, up to 25 years.  We purchased a bottle for Lynn to celebrate her birthday.  This is not to be confused with most balsamic vinegars picked up at your local grocer.

We said our goodbyes to the tour group and headed back to Pisa for our last night at the agriturisimo. We thought we would bypass the toll roads on the way back and take a separate road down through the mountains.  This has worked well before but this time it turned a two-hour trip into almost four as we snaked our way through narrow twisted mountain roads. We were treated to some beautiful scenery, but the delay pretty much took going out to dinner out of the picture, and we grabbed a few items at a grocery store to hold us over for the night.

On September 9, I had one last soft-boiled egg for breakfast at our outdoor table before we checked out. We had a few hours on our hands before the ferry to Elba and decided we couldn’t leave Pisa without taking a look at the famous tower.  We read lots more about pickpocket threats and shady parking arrangements, so we took no chances and paid 2€ to park in an official parking lot.  The lean on the tower really is a sight to see. Construction on the 190-foot tower began in 1173 and it started leaning almost immediately.  Various efforts helped over the centuries, but nothing halted the continued tipping until stabilizing anchors were successful in 2008.  So of course, we saw lots of tourists taking the photo shot of themselves appearing to hold the tower up. After an hour or so walking the grounds at the Leaning Tower, it was time to move on to our ferry ride to Elba at the small port town of Piombino.

Piombino is the main departure point for visitors to the island Elba.  The whole ferry operations are quite impressive. Massive ships from several companies run several times a day, carrying individuals, private cars, delivery trucks, tractor-trailers, and even tankers. The operation was really pretty smooth but a little overwhelming at first when you’ve never done it before and don’t speak the language. The one-hour ride, carrying our rental car, in a very comfortable cabin cost 174€ round trip.  We rolled off the ferry with plans for lunch on arrival, but we couldn’t figure out the parking meter, and found out quickly that the value of Google Maps was reduced on this little 16-mile-long island that once hosted Napolean as an exile.  We couldn’t find the place we wanted to go to and had to settle for something less, before heading off to our apartment for the next four days when we really had problems with navigation.  We lost cell signal at the spot where we thought we should be and had no email address or phone number at the spot where we could find signal. After an aggravating couple of hours, things were sorted out and we reached our Airbnb destination with the lofty title of “Appartamento 11 Paradiso splendida vista mare”.  We paid $449 for four nights here, somewhat over our normal rate.  The accommodations were simple but adequate (including a full stove which we used to full advantage), and the patio had a million-dollar view overlooking the beaches of Marina di Campo with the island high point of Mt. Capanne in the background.  We found a local grocery store and provisioned ourselves for the next few days with cheese, eggs, milk, bread, local grapes, apricot juice, and a razor thin Italian bacon known as Rigatino Tuscani.

We admired a beautiful sunrise over the beach with a patio breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast on the morning of September 10.  Our first activity of the day was intended to be a hike along the coast of the island that would later cut up to the summit.  The trail was rough, and it soon became apparent Lynn’s Tevas weren’t the right shoe for the trail.  No worries, we came back to a delightful little pebble beach that was a short walk from our apartment. We came back here several times over our stay. The water temperature was refreshing, just a few other swimmers there, and we really enjoyed it.  We swam for a time, before taking a drive around the west side of the island.  We stopped for lunch in Marina di Campo, where I had a fabulous snail/mushroom pasta and Lynn had a hummus ball salad that she really enjoyed.  This spot was right on the beach.  There weren’t a lot of sandy beaches on the island, and those tended to be more crowded, so while we were happy to have lunch here we enjoyed our little semi-private beach for swimming.  We continued on with our west coast drive, stopping to enjoy the vistas a few times, although the roads weren’t really built with that in mind.  We stopped for a swim on the way back before coming back to our apartment for the night.

A perfume made on the island has a beautiful beach with a white cliff background as an advertisement.  I decided to find that beach, and that was our quest for September 11.  Google Maps got us close but couldn’t finish the deal, so we wandered around for a time before finding the right spot.  There were actually two nice beaches not too far apart and we spent time at each. Padulella was the one in the perfume ad, just around a rocky outcrop from a second beach, Capo Bianco.  We spend several hours visiting both before picking up some seafood, pasta, fresh bread, and some wine on the way home and having a home cooked dinner that we enjoyed on our patio.  I was beginning to notice that the island was quite clean overall, with abundant recycle opportunities. We were happy to support that effort.

We started our last full day on Elba with a leisurely light breakfast.  The nights on Elba were comfortable – low 60’s, with no dew. The days were still getting warm, mid 80’s, and could get hot hiking uphill in the sun.  Evening breezes cooled our apartment down nicely, we never turned on the available AC.  Our plan for the day was to take another stab at our hike we started a couple of days earlier.  This was a tough little hike of maybe 3 miles.  It followed the coast, though hardly level, before heading straight uphill about 1000 feet.  The reward at the top was a morning sun vista over the eastern slopes of Mt. Fonza.  The reward for the effort was another refreshing swim at our local beach.  We came back and cleaned up, then took an afternoon siesta.  It is common for restaurants in Italy to close for a few hours in the afternoon before reopening for dinner. For our last night on the island, we chose to revisit our beach restaurant that had served us such a nice lunch.  We splurged, getting a mixed seafood plate, and a whole sea bass, accompanied by a local bottle of white wine.  There were far fewer fast food restaurants in Italy than other places (certainly the US), but many protected Destination of Origin foods.  Seems the Italians are more concerned with quality over quantity.

September 13 was our last morning on the island. We cleaned out the refrigerator for breakfast, then took one last walk down to our little local beach.  Although we had walked this way several times, this was the first time we (Lynn) noticed that the whole side of the hill was covered in wild rosemary.  The smell must be a real treat when they are in bloom.  We really enjoyed our time in Elba.  Unlike the major tourist areas we have visited, Elba had very few English speakers.  A few waiters, our landlady – that was about it.  That presented a bit of a challenge, but we worked our way through.  The lack of English was especially noticeable as we were trying to get back on the ferry to return to the mainland.  Ferry deckhands yelled Italian at us then walked away. We looked at each other, then tried to follow the lead of others. It worked out.

Our last day in Italy had remained unplanned until the last 24 hours.  After considering a few options, we settled on San Gimignano.  This tiny dot on the map get a lot of tourist press, and for good reason.  We felt fortunate to get a lodging only 24 hours in advance that was in walking distance to the walled old city.  We drove through the Tuscan landscape from Piombino, arriving in San Gimignano in mid-afternoon.  We checked into the Hotel Da Graziano ($76), a clean simple room that included parking (valuable in this town), Wi-Fi, refrigerator, an outstanding breakfast, and walking distance to the town.  This ancient, walled city of towers is full of food shops – wine, cheese, candies, sausages, restaurants, and shops with crafts, beautiful paintings and photography, and clothes. And, of course, a torture museum. You don’t see those every day, and this one certainly highlighted the cruelty of man.  We spent a few hours that afternoon and again the next morning, taking in all the sights. We enjoyed it all, but especially the gelato from Gelateria Dondoli. I had a melon gelato that was without question the best I have ever had.

We said our farewells to San Gimignano, and decided we had time to visit the homeplace of Leonardo da Vinci for lunch on our way back to the airport.  The town of Vinci was a pleasant little town, unfortunately we didn’t have time for the museum. We did enjoy a nice lunch before heading back to the airport, filling up the car on the way to the tune of a pricey equivalent of $7.86/gallon.  There were no problems dropping of the car or on the flight home.

We seemed to pay a high price for many individual items on this trip, but the total of $4329 for 8 nights in Italy, including flights, rental car, all tickets, meals, and the hotel in Abu Dhabi before departure and on arrival was well worth the experience.