Tuscany: Living La Vita Buona

Article first published on www.igougo.com under my pen name of "Bear in Britain".

For many tourists Tuscany is a manic dash from one monumental sight to another. Uffizi; Ponte Vecchio; Leaning Tower … check. The pace misses the essence of the place. Italians embody gracious living. In my travels there, I've attempted to capture their knack for mixing work and play into a soul-soothing “good life”.


Let's start with the highlights. Any trip must include several days in Florence. Culture hounds die and enter heaven here, in the official womb of the renaissance. The Feast of San Giovanni in late June is a remarkable spectacle and worth fighting the crowds to see.

San Gimignano is a magical, fairy tale stage set of a town rich in things to do, fabulous views and great shops. Another favourite hill town is Volterra. MUCH less visited by tourists, it has all the same Renaissance charms of its sister towns, but adds some remarkable Roman ruins and the source of some of the best Alabaster in Europe.

Montelupo is another great discovery. Most of the typical painted dishes and pots of Tuscany are made around here. In town you’ll find lots of artisans selling their works direct, at a much higher quality and for better prices than in the bigger towns. The ceramics festival in June is delightfully local, but should be more broadly known.



Quick Tips & Suggestions

• Watch “Tea with Mussolini” before you go to San Gimignano to get in the mood.
• Take a long walk through an olive grove or a field of sunflowers.
• Rent a place with a kitchen and cook with fine local ingredients.
• Book in advance for the Uffizi.
• Don’t count on anything going according to plan; strikes often muck up the day.
• Drink lots of wine; especially the Brunello and "Super Tuscans", less known but generally better (if a bit more expensive) than the Chiantis.
• Eat in restaurants where nobody speaks English.
• Go to mass, even if you don’t understand Italian, to feel the pagan-like ceremony of it all.
• Try water colouring or sketching something, it will sharpen your appreciation of what you see.
• Climb at least one bell tower.
• Consume massive amounts of ice cream … especially pistachio.
• Attempt to speak Italian.
• Barter and buy a knockoff designer handbag from the African guys on the street corner.
• Use the money you saved to buy gold jewellery on the Ponte Vecchio.
• Take Ross King’s “Brunelleschi’s Dome” along for holiday reading; history rarely makes this good a story.
• Bring bug spray!

Best Way to Get Around
It is completely possible to survive without a car if you stay at the Villa Pandolfini (see below). A 15-minute walk takes you across the Arno to Signa; the train takes 20 minutes into Florence. From there, you can get trains back out to most major Tuscan towns.

I recommend a car, however. This will give you the freedom to get out into the countryside; some of the smaller sites I write about would be tough to reach on public transport. You’ll also save time. Besides going directly to Florence, getting to most locations by train and bus would take much longer than hopping in your car and going direct.

A word of warning. The Italians are fast, aggressive drivers. If this makes you nervous, consider your options carefully.

Where to Stay: Villa Pandolfini, Lastra a Signa
Pandolfini was built in the Renaissance as a hunting lodge for nobles who wanted a quick escape from Florence. These days, at just 12 miles out of town, it’s practically suburban. Yet once you cross through the gates you’ll feel like you’re in another world.

The villa is the centre of an agricultural estate that stretches across the hills above the Arno here. There are grapevines and olives (you can sample the estate-bottled produce of both) and several rental properties scattered throughout. We stay at the main villa, which is subdivided to provide one rental apartment, one condominium and the home of the owners of the estate, the Broggi family.

The guest accommodation comprises two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a sitting room. You actually enter through the back of the main building, where a loggia runs along the ground floor and everything looks out over a formal garden.

All the rooms are generously sized and palatially decorated. Every ceiling (hovering at least 16 feet above the floor) is painted; 19th century frescos designed to evoke the original renaissance feel of the place. The main bedroom has a king-sized bed, a fireplace, arm chairs, a massive museum-quality baroque mirror and French doors that lead out onto the veranda that runs across the front of the of the villa. The second bedroom has a double bed and a twin.

The kitchen is big enough to fit a table that comfortably seats eight and has all the modern conveniences. In addition, there’s a massive fireplace and an old marble sink to give an old world feel.

The sitting room is dominated by a towering mirror and a portrait of the Prat family, French aristocrats who escaped here after the revolution. (Napoleon was later a visitor.) The furniture is both comfortable and grand. The best feature of this room, however, is the tall pair of French doors that lead out to the loggia and garden.

The loggia has well-cushioned wrought iron furniture for lounging or dining (we eat by candlelight here most nights). The gardens you look over are shared by the occupants of the adjacent lemon house (another holiday rental) and the family that owns the condominium, yet we rarely see anyone but the gardener. We frequently play games of bocce across the gravel here, and make lemonade from the ripe fruit that falls from the potted trees that ring the fountain.

Pandolfini’s pool is a 10-minute walk up the hill behind the villa. (If you’re not fit, you can drive.) It sits in an idyllic position in the olive grove, overlooking the city of Florence and the roofs and towers of neighbouring villas. Though the pool is also shared by occupants of other rental properties, it’s rare to run into other guests. You’re more likely to come across the famiglia Broggi in the late afternoon, taking a quick dip before dinner.

At $1,500 per week for a property that sleeps up to 5, this is about the best luxury value for money I’ve ever found.

For more details, see www.villapandolfini.com

At Chelsea, Pimm's and Flowers Start the Summer

Like many an affluent, professional immigrant to the UK, I confess to being completely captivated by the social phenomenon known as "The Season". It's often said that the Brits do tradition better than anyone, and this seems particularly true of the round of blockbuster social events that mark the summer calendar.

American summer (and the ability to wear white shoes without ridicule) is generally bracketed by Memorial Day and Labour Day. In Britain, especially amongst the upper middle classes who first kicked off these traditions at the end of the Victorian era, summer starts with your first Pimm's Cup while perusing show gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show. It stretches through Ascot, Wimbledon, Cartier Polo, the Henley Regatta, Cowes Week and countless country house concerts and open air operas until "the glorious twelfth", when everyone retreats to Scotland at the opening of grouse season, gun dogs in tow, to shoot things on the moors.

At least that's the myth. The truth is that these events haven't been exclusive to stereotypes from Merchant Ivory films for a very long time. If they were, of course, how would we tradition-loving foreigners get in? The best places at almost all of the events of The Season these days belong to either corporate sponsors or Russian Oligarchs. If I attend any more events on the calendar I'll probably be the guest of a big company rather than a of some floppy-haired Englishman in a straw boater. (More's the pity.)

"The truth is that these events haven't been exclusive to stereotypes from Merchant Ivory films for a very long time."

Chelsea is, however, still a bit different. While there is a big corporate presence, it's separated from the main event by time. The great and the good get an advanced preview the Monday night before the show opens. Royal Horticultural Society members have exclusive access on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by the general public for the rest of the week. This means that, though crowded, the paths of the world's most famous flower show are still filled with keen gardeners taking notes, rather than partying executives taking access for granted.

Which brings me to last week, when I wandered and marvelled at magical show gardens and eye popping floral displays with the requisite gin-based cocktail (the aforementioned Pimm's) in one hand and notebook in the other.

It was one of the best shows I can remember. The judges agreed, granting more gold medals than they have for years. Other than a wide propensity for iris, the displays were remarkably different. Traditionalists could revel in a copy of Hidcote, modernists in an imagined Martian garden, historians in a Roman scent garden. The large show gardens attract the comment, but it's the smaller spaces that draw the notebooks and cameras. And it's in the small gardens that most of us find ideas we're likely to copy in our more humble spaces.

The Fortnum & Mason garden celebrated the store's 300th anniversary

Most, but not all. I was dumbstruck by the Fortnum & Mason garden, which was at least six times the size of my tiny courtyard at home, yet left me imagining how I might recreate its spirit in miniature. It was dominated by an ivy-covered wall at its end; precisely the main feature at my house. Of course, it's unlikely that I can manage to squeeze in the shell-encrusted grottos, beehives, herbacious borders, box-surrounded fountains and grid of paths into my postage stamp. But the ideas have been sparked. That, after all, is the point of the show.

The Creative Power of Rain

It's a bank holiday Monday in England. And, inevitably, it's raining and cold; so blustery I was driven indoors after a valiant 40-minute attempt at planting a few pots in the garden. What better prompt, then, to sit down at the computer and do something I've been meaning to do for at least a year.

Blogs are a gift for former journalists, frustrated by their desire to write for and share with a wide audience. Yes, I still write. But the general public is probably not interested in my latest bit of ghostwriting on the management challenges of flexible working, nor do most business topics give the personal delight of recounting a recent holiday or climbing on a virtual soapbox to comment on the world.

I was a blogger once, in spirit, long before the digital age. Back at my alma mater, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, part of the sophomore year newswriting class entailed turning yourself into a daily columnist. Monday through Friday, 500 entertaining and engaging words on a topic of your choice had to be in Professor Dick Hainey's mailbox by 5pm. I don't feel that old, but technologically it was a different age. In 1983 this entailed banging a column out on an electric typewriter and actually walking it across campus to the journalism building. I must admit that there was something more satisfying about "filing copy" when you physically put a piece of paper into an "in" box than simply hitting "return".

The thought processes, however, remain the same. Observe the world. Consider a fresh angle. Write for your audience. Make public. The beauty of blogging is ease of publication and an instant link to the world. That's quite a compelling proposition for a former journalist looking for the occaisional outlet for her words. And a terribly convenient one for someone who's lived and worked in multiple cities and is trying to keep in touch with a far-flung address list.

So, friends and family, this blog's for you. If any strangers stumble across it and find it entertaining, thanks for reading.