Travel: Chanti, Italy 1998

	We arrived at the villa we had rented for a week in Chianti on a Saturday afternoon to discover that our agonizing and organizating over the past few months had paid-off. It was a beautiful, somewhat isolated, 150 year-old villa in extraordinary condition. It sits at the peak of a hill over the valley with a long gravel road leading to it from the small town of Greve in Chianti about 2 kilometers away. Think about an older Los Gatos or Sonoma with many fewer homes, architecture based in stone, and more deciduous trees. By the time the rest of the group arrived, we had dinner ready--everything improvised from what we could buy from a farmer's market in Firenze before we left and what we could get from the few shops in Greve before they closed--and we still had time for a quick nap. We had chicken breast with local wine, porcini mushrooms and onions, a huge salad, fresh asparagus, and mozerella, tomatoes, and basil stacked on slices of bread. Everything used the extra virgin olive oil from the trees right on the estate. For dessert, we nibbled on watermelon and gobbled cherries by the basket. The Tuscany region is very special--in particular the Chianti valley. Aside from being beautiful, it is a perfect example of a lifestyle typical of Italy. The pace is slower and there is history seeping out from everywhere, but there is a balance between old and new, ancient and contemporary. Being used to an area where everything is hyper-new (Silicon Valley), this was a plesant surprise for me. Greve in Chianti is a small town situated in the valley on a road that leads from Firenze, South to Siena. It has everything you could need--and charm in abundance. One of the things I liked the most about the Italian lifestyle (aside from siestas) is that everyone in town comes out in the late afternoon and evening to sit, talk, and visit with each other in the center of any town. Greve is no exception. We would run or ride into town everyday, mornings to get fresh cheese, rolls, and fruit for breakfast, afternoons to get supplies for dinner. I loved the idea of only shopping a day at a time--something I learned from reading the book, Under a Tuscany Sun, the perfect book to read before a trip to Tuscany. The view from the villa is spectacular...
...as is the villa itself. Onto San Gimignano or back to Firenze.

 

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