Bellisimo! (Part 1 - Tuscany)

(Aileen)
NB. I am including a small sample of pics in the post below. Please visit our website "The Smallzone" to view the complete set of Tuscany/Cinque Terre pics, as well as pics from other trips we've taken in the past.

We’re back from 5 days of glorious Italian food, wine and sunshine.

Day 1 - Ryanair morning, Black rooster* afternoon
Taxi pick up at 3:15 a.m. (and the bastard came 5 minutes early!) Grumble. 10 minute taxi ride to Victoria Coach station to catch a 1 hour 15min bus to London Stansted Airport (a big fat lie as it can in no way be called London!). Arrive at Stansted before 5 a.m, and once again it amazes me how many other crazy people out there are willing to take a 6 a.m. flight…the airport is packed with way-too-cheery-for-5-am-people. Grumble. We are leisurely getting a Starbucks coffee when our flight status suddenly changes from “Please Wait” (no, not “Go to Gate”) to “Final Call”!!! It’s then a mad dash to the gate which feels like a mile away, a full grande coffee goes smashing to the ground, not-so-young people (us included) with suitcases are running up and down stairs, down long halls. We get to the gate and boarding has not yet started. Ryanair bastards. One of these days someone will have a heart attack or seriously injure themselves. Good morning to you too. We get on the plane and promptly fall asleep. When we awake we are in sunny Italy (Pisa to be exact) and the morning seems like a distant nightmare.

After a minor rental car blip (long lines, and for some reason we are quoted 450 euros instead of the 130 we got quoted when making the reservation), we are on our way – seeing what a Fiat Panda is made of as we pummel down the Fl-PI-LI highway on our way to the Chianti region. First stop is Castello Vicchiomaggio, a winery with a restaurant which unfortunately cannot serve us as they are busy entertaining a big bus load of tourists. Down to their wine shop we go for our first taste of Chianti Classico in Chianti, this is probably not the best idea on empty stomachs.

Back into the car in search of lunch. Two to three km later we run into Greve, one of the famous Chianti towns. We duck into one of the restaurants in their main square and proceed to enjoy one of the best meals on the trip. Bellisimo. Nothing better than a plate of perfect pasta (parpardelle with wild boar ragout for me, pasta with tomato and pecorino cheese for Ed), and some fabulous house Chianti. Yummy. Unfortunately we cannot linger though as we have our first winery appointment at 14:30.

A short 10 minute drive from Greve, we arrive at Fattoria Casaloste in Panzano, a small 17 ha. organic vineyard run by Giovanni and Emilia. Emilia shows us around. They are originally from Naples, but Giovanni’s life dream was to own a vineyard so they moved to Tuscany around 15 years ago, found a dilapidated farmhouse with a vineyard, spent 4 years fixing it up and working on their first vintage. Fast forward to today, and they now make some of the finest Chianti’s in the region, and continue to make their wines with strong personal commitment and care. It’s a family-run business with Giovanni in charge of making the wine, and Emilia doing everything else i.e. marketing, finances, winery visits in addition to taking care of the family.

Our next stop is Felsina, in Castelnuovo Berardenga. Felsina is on a completely different scale to Casaloste. The winery boasts over 300 ha of vineyards, and a stunning cellar to match. Felsina is famous for it’s commitment to producing 100% Sangiovese Chianti’s. Aside from the wine tasting, we also get a chance to sample their special olive oil line, where the same care and attention, as well as focus in single varietals goes into making the oils, and the varieties all have distinctly different flavours.

We then head to Casalore Il Libbiano, our Bed and Breakfast on the outskirts of San Gimignano. We are warmly greeted by Andrea (the proprietor), and manage to take a quick dip in the pool and admire the B&B gardens before scrumptious dinner, then a good night’s rest. It’s been a long, but fruitful day.

Some pics from Day 1 (L-R): Parparedelle pasta, Fattoria Casaloste Winery, Felsina


Haul for the day: 6 bottles red wine

*A note on the black rooster, which is the symbol of the Chianti Classico region: Legend has it that the feuding towns of Florence and Siena agreed to settle their border disputes by each setting off from their respective towns, a representative on horseback. The border would be set wherever the 2 representatives eventually met. The night before, Siennese threw a big celebration, and all ate and drank including the town’s rooster (a white rooster). The Florentines on the other hand, went to bed early, and did not feed their town rooster (a black rooster). Early the next morning, the black rooster was no longer able to take the hunger pangs and begins his crowing early. Florence’s rider therefore sets off earlier, and thus the Florence region (incl. Chianti Classico) is bigger.

Day 2 – Tuscan towns, Brunello di Montalcino

Breakfast at 8:30 and then we’re off to visit 2 Tuscan towns. The first stop in San Gimignano, with it’s distinctive skyline of towers. We climb the tallest and enjoy some great views of Tuscan countryside. Tuscany is incredibly beautiful, filled with rolling hills lined with rows of olives trees, grape vines, and of course the distinctive cypress trees. Many of the Tuscan towns are perched on hilltops.

Our next stop is Siena, one of the major Tuscan towns and forever rival to Florence (they have a long rich history of fighting) to stroll through her medieval alleyways, see the famous Piazza del Campo and her beautiful Duomo. We stop at a restaurant in one of the alleyways for a plate each of Pici, a pasta specialty of the region. Pici is essentially short, fat, spaghetti – absolutely delicious in a simple tomato sauce and a generous dousing of grated Tuscan pecorino cheese. Accompanied of course with a pichet of Chianti vino rosso. Yummmm.

Refueled and ready to go, we head south to Montalcino, home of Brunello di Montalcino, for our only winery visit of the day. Altesino is a well respected producer of Brunello di Montalcino. On arrival we are greeted by 2 big German Shephards (one of which saunters over and takes the time to “mark” our car), and 2 young American ladies manning the office on a lazy Sunday and in charge of giving the wine tours. Brunello di Montalcino has DOCG designation, just as Chianti Classico does. Both DOCGs require a predominance of the same grape i.e. the Sangiovese, however Brunello’s are famous around the world for being meatier, richer wines - the kind you hide away and forget about for a couple of years, as they become better with age. We splurge on a 2001 Riserva which we’ll hide away in the cupboard.

Next and final stop for the day is the hilltop town of Montalcino. At the pinnacle is a fort which has great views, and also happens to have an Enoteca where we share a 3 wine tasting – 1 Rosso di Montalcino (lighter, younger red wine), 1 Brunello di Montalcino, and 1 Supertuscan. We splurge on a 2001 Supertuscan, another for hiding away in the cupboard.

Some pics from Day 2 (L-R): San Gimignano, Sunflowers, Montalcino Wild Boar


Haul for the day: 3 bottles red wine, 3 packs of pasta

Day 3 – Florence, Ristorante “La Tenda Rossa”

We spend Day 3 taking in the sights of Florence. Florence is like a big open air museum, with works of art all over the place. The Medici family (rulers of Florence for many many years) were great patrons of the arts and supported Renaissance artists such as Boticelli, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci.

No visit to Florence is complete without a visit to the city’s Duomo, and boy what a Duomo it is. It’s massive. We climbed the 483 steps to the top of Brunelleschi’s famous dome for some close up views of the dome’s frescos, and some amazing views of Florence and surrounding country side.

Once back down, a short stroll south takes you to Piazza della Signoria, essentially an outdoor sculpture gallery. Cooly looking over the hordes of tourists is Michelangelo’s David (or at least a replica, the original now sits in the Accademia), Cellini’s bronze statue of Perseus, Giambologna’s almost moving Rape of the Sabine Women, and Ammannati’s Neptune fountain. The Uffizzi (one of Florence’s main museums and a treasure trove of Renaissance art) was unfortunately closed for the day, so we instead took a short stroll to Ponte Vecchio, Florence’s oldest bridge, with a jimble jamble of jewelry shops lining the bridge’s walls.

Once we’d had our fill of Florence sights, we drove down to San Casciano in Val de Pesa to check into Villa I Barronci, another B&B to be closer to Ristorante “La Tenda Rossa”, one of the most famous restaurants in Italy, where we had a reservation for dinner. With the expectation of getting hammered, we had previously arranged for the B&B to drive us to the restaurant and the restaurant to drive us back to the B&B. This arrangement worked out quite well, since as expected, we had more than the recommended daily allowance of alcohol with our meal. We opted for the tasting menu. So we each had :
• A glass of prosseco to accompany our amuse bouche.
• A glass of San Gimignano white accompanied starter 1 (3 preparations of a strange crustacean creature), and starter 2 (fresh spaghetti and seafood in a pesto sauce).
• Another glass of white (not sure what but a “meatier” white) accompanied main course 1 (chicken ravioli with crisp bacon).
• A hearty supertuscan red (and in the case of Ed, 2 glasses) accompanied main course 2 (pigeon).
• Pre-dessert was a scoop of sage sorbet (initially strange but actually very good). A glass of Vin Santo (Italian dessert wine) accompanied the main desert.

All very good food and wine, but when compared to the glorious food and wine orgy at Cordeillan Bages in Bordeaux last year, we were sad to say, a little disappointed, but it was nevertheless a great way to end our 3 days in Tuscany.

Some pics from Day 3 (L-R): Duomo, View of Campagnile from Dome, David


Haul for the day: 1 wild boar salami

Bellisimo! (Part 2 - Cinque Terre)

Day 4 – Pisa, Winding roads to Cinque Terre

After breakfast the next day, we head over to Pisa to see it’s famous leaning tower. It is indeed leaning. It’s quite the site to see in person.

From there we head north up to the province of Liguria. After much winding around the mountains on tiny local roads, we eventually arrive at Monterroso Al Mare, one of the 5 Cinque Terre towns and our base for the region. The Cinque Terre is a Unesco World Heritage designated region composed of 5 towns essentially built up on little spaces between the mountain sides and the Mediterranean ocean. All along the mountain sides in between the towns are terraces with rows of vineyards, and olive and lemon groves (think rice terraces).

After a plate of pasta each for lunch (spaghetti of course!), we spend the rest of the day enjoying the sunshine by the beach and chilling on a mountainside bar with bottle of Cinque Terre white.

Then we head back to our B&B, stopping by the wine shop to pick up supplies i.e. a bottle of red, some prosciutto and tomatoes to enjoy on our B&B terrace.

Some pics from Day 4 (L-R): Pisa, Monterosso, Chilling


Day 5 – On the Cinque Terre trail

Day 5 begins with a cup of cappuccino and a fresh, warm donut at the pastry shop around the corner from our B&B. On this day we decided to do a section of the Cinque Terre trail, a walking trail which links all 5 towns and takes approx 5 hours from end to end. We aim to do only the first section, Monterosso to Vernazza, a 1:30 hour trail, and also coincidentally the most difficult section, as I overheard in a coffee shop in Vernazza after the ordeal. The trail was quite narrow with lots of climbs up/down mountain ridges. A lot of the way you were barely an inch or 2 from falling into someone’s vineyard or lemon grove, or into the ocean. The views were amazing though. On the often steep climbs up from Monterosso, you could turn around and have an amazing view of Monterosso nestled up against a mountain, facing the big blue Mediterranean, frothy waves crashing against the cliff sides.

About halfway through the trail, we came across an old man selling his lemons from a crate. We couldn’t resist getting a couple of lemons (one of which we’ve brought back to London with us along with a bag full of lemons picked up at a market), we plan to make a mean lemonade this weekend).

After a while of trails winding uphill (when you’re breathing heavily and feel you can proceed no more), the trail suddenly begins to descend, and you begin to catch glimpses of Vernazza hiding behind a mountain ridge. She’s finally revealed to you as you come around that mountain ridge, and she’s quite the sight – much smaller in scale and more compact than Monterroso.

We spend some time watching 2 crazy Italian men jumping into the crashing waves along the pier. Then we go in search of lunch. We plonk down at a restaurant in a little town square, and watch the little town in action as we devour our well-earned octopus salad and plates of spaghetti (seafood for me, tomato for Ed). It felt like being in someone’s back yard. A group of men were sitting on some stairs nearby greeting people as they walked by, flirting with ladies walking their dog, imparting their stoop sitting knowledge and experience to the young.

A 4-minute train ride through the mountain side had as back in Monterroso (yes, a cruel joke after the 1.5 hour hike) for an afternoon on the beach. When the clouds rolled in, we headed into town for a slice of foccacie pizza (delicious!), a scoop of gelato, a bottle of red wine accompanied by a plate of Italian salami’s.

Despite being full from the afternoon munchies, we could not pass up a last chance for a plate of spaghetti in Italy for dinner. For some reason spaghetti is just so much better in Italy. I capped the trip off with a plate of seafood spaghetti, while Ed had the seafood spaghetti, and also somehow convinced me that in addition, we had to have another plate of spaghetti al pomodore (it being the last night and all). Hmmm…missing it already.

Some pics from Day 6 (L-R): Cinque Terre trail, View of Vernazza


Haul for the day: 1 bottle Cinque Terre white and 1 lemon

Day 6 – The journey home

We wake up early on Day 6 and carefully pack our wine in our suitcases. We had packed light for the journey here (we had come with 2 moderately empty suitcases and a bunch of bubble wrap!). We leave with 10 bottles on wine in addition to our luggage. Mission accomplished I’d say.

We head out for a cappuccino and warm donut at the pastry shop around the corner, and are surprised to find a street market set up on the road fronting the beach. We take a stroll through the market, and pick up a chunk of pecorino (we’ll try making us some of that pici pasta – we had picked some up in Siena), and a bag of lemons (they have amazing lemons) for a jug of lemonade. Ed also wants to learn how to make Caipirinha’s (with fresh lemons) as he had 3 or 4 of them before dinner the evening before.

We then reluctantly loaded up our trusty Fiat Panda (it served us well!), and headed back up the winding country roads on the way to Genova, from where we catch a 13:30 flight back to Stansted. London is cold and cloudy. We’re wishing we were back in sunny Italy!

Haul for the day: Chunk of pecorino, bag of lemons

Week 1

Week 1 on my new project was not so bad due to:
1. It being a 3-day week (I started on Wed)
2. Nice weather which made Worthing quite appealing (for now)
3. Ed and I off next week to Tuscany for hols!! (so can't take anything too seriously with the anticipation of Tuscany hovering over)

Below are some pics of Worthing:

On the train to Worthing (meandering through the South Downs)


Shale beach in Worthing


My hotel this week


Ciao!!

Taking the plunge

(Aileen)
Today is my first day on a new project. It’s a 2-month stint assessing a client’s release management capabilities (delivery-related), and it’s out of town. What in the world am I doing?

To top it all off, there were a string of unfortunate and ironic events yesterday. I got staffed through to the end of August, and then my August faculty position got confirmed (so had to cancel that). This morning I got an email asking if I’d like to do a July faculty slot. Not!!! (since I’m now on a project!). What a bummer.

So here I am on a morning train down to the English southern coast. I feel a glass-is-half-full assessment is in order:
1. I only have to be out of town 3/5 days of the week
2. It’s “commutable” if I can put up with a 2 hour train ride in the morning, and 1.5 hour train ride home
3. The client office is in a seaside town, and it’s summer so could enjoy the dose of sunshine
4. The role’s only 2 months in duration

There. Maintain slow even breathing…inhale…exhale…inhale…

What could Mary do for you?

(Aileen)
On Saturday, we watched Mary Poppins (the West End show). It was quite the entertaining, well-produced, well-performed all-around good quality show. We highly recommend it.

Afterwards while sipping Pimms and lemonade and enjoying the brief period of sunshine, we sat and contemplated on the question “What would Mary do you for?".

In case you have never heard of Mary Poppins, or have (as I did before watching the show) only a vague recollection of Julie Andrews prancing around in the movie version, let me just provide a short synopsis. The Banks are a family in trouble. Mr Banks is the cold detached disciplinarian father of two unruly spoilt children who have scared off a series of nannies in quick succession, and also an all-business non-affectionate husband. His kids put together a “list of qualifications” of their dream nanny e.g. feeds us lot’s of sweets, which he tosses in the fireplace, and he and Mrs Banks begin their desperate search for a nanny. In a gust of wind, Mary suddenly appears (with coincidentally a copy of the kids’ list of nanny qualifications). Through a series of “lessons” a.k.a quite nifty song and dance routines, she manages to 1) convince the children of the futility in their grumpy attention-seeking ways and also begin to appreciate that there’s a whole world to explore and that things are not always as they seem; 2) convince Mrs Banks that she’s a capable strong woman; and finally 3) help Mr Banks realize that the most important thing to him is his family.

All basic life lessons really, but one could use a reminder once in a while. So a Pimms and full glass of wine later, I believe my answer to the question posed was “A swift kick up the arse”. Cast off thy woeful ways!

Some pics of the day:
Outside the theatre


Soul searching with Pimms and Lemonade


Chinatown munchies

First day back

(Aileen)
I just could justify it no longer (at least in my mind) – the bumming at home. And the more I stayed at home “doing random chores”, the more I seemed to fall into this brain deadening, energy zapped state. It was getting quite desperate really.

So today I got up at 5:30 along with Ed and did the morning grind. Got dressed in uncomfortable office-wear, did some Metro (free trashy London daily) reading while on train to work, coffee on the way in to keep my pulse beating. It’s my first day back in the office since rolling of my last project 2 weeks ago.

Spent the morning doing some half-hearted looking for roles (got one nibble but do I really want to be travelling to Glasgow for a month?), some other mindless tasks e.g. Workstation Safety training, plus stuff I can no longer put off i.e. someone’s performance feedback.

It’s now 13:20, I’ve just had a Pret avocado wrap (honourable mention as Ed loves these things) and am fighting the supreme urge to call it a day and head back home and buy some planters for a wee bit of gardening tonight (Ed’s suggestion).

One of the main problems of course is that’s I’m suffering from a complete and utter lack of motivation for work. Could have something to do with this year’s India stint which left me feeling burned out and not very eager to jump into another technology delivery type role. Could have something to do with nagging feeling that I don’t really have any specific skills or areas of speciality - I’ve just been doing a little bit of everything, and I have no idea what I’d like to be doing (other than anything-but-technology-delivery).

14:02. Hmm. I’ll give it another hour so. 15:00 doesn’t seem too disgraceful a time pack up and head home, no?

Thieves

(Aileen)
Not sure what to think about those thieving bastards who very disrespectully broke into our home, and took our stuff.

I found the following quote which I suppose could help lessen my ill-feelings towards them and reduce the urge to, if given the opportunity, clobber them over the head with a heavy object.

"Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it."
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Spring Cleaning

(Aileen)
I feel like I’m in a rut. Or at least on the downward swing of a roller coaster. After 4 months of intensive toiling in India for work, then 2 weeks of traipsing around Vietnam for play, I am now back in London, unstaffed and not really sure what to do with my time, feeling a little bit unconnected to reality, and a little unsure about what our “life” in London really is.

We moved to London a little over 2 years ago. Since then we haven’t actually been in London much. For a little over a year I worked up in Edinburgh. Once that was over I moved straight into a role that had me out near Manchester, and then in India for a significant chunk of time. Whenever we can we’ve also tried to travel as much as possible around Europe checking cities off our list of places to visit.

So here I am, not completely “rooted” in London, unsure about what the future holds. Should I invest the time/energy towards getting connected e.g. join a gym, join a club, work harder at meeting new people, only to be uprooted again if my next assignment flings me to another far off place?

I think for starters, some spring cleaning is in order. I can:
• Reconnect with old friends - With all the flitting about, I’ve been absolutely atrocious at staying connected with friends and family. And this is probably one of my main reasons for starting this blog.
• Tie up a whole host of odds and ends – things I really need to do but haven’t really gotten around to e.g. US taxes, visit the doctor to have a nagging cough looked into, visit the dentist etc. Also, our flat was burgled while we were in Vietnam and that’s presented a whole new variety of odd and ends e.g. insurance claims, security system installation, door replacement. Fun stuff.
• Start lists –lists of things I need to do, list of places I’d still like to visit, lists of short and long term goals, lists, lists, and more lists
• Give our flat a nice thorough cleaning incl. getting rid of accumulated clutter

Looks like a pretty chunky list. Now if only I can get my ass off the sofa.

Pic for Profile

Please ignore - still trying to figure out the best way to set up the blog "extras"

We survived...

(Aileen)
...yesterday the 13 mile hike from Guildford to Dorking on the North Downs way. I'm sure there were more than a few moments when Ed would have liked nothing better than to poke me with a stick for having planned such an activity on a lazy warm Sunday. But there was enough beautiful secenery to make it worth while, and we did have to burn off some of the food we ate on Saturday.

The day could be divided into 4 mini challenges:
1. Find coffee. Failed miserably. Starbucks on Northcote Rd opened at 8 and our train was at 8:02. Starbucks in Guidlford opened at 10:30 (those crazy country folks!). We finally settled on what looked like the one open restaurant in Guildford which had some not very nice coffee. So Ed went the whole day without a proper coffee and beware of the Ed who has not had coffee!

2. Survive till the ham sandwich. The first "half" (I use half loosely since there were no indications along the trail of how far you'd gone or how much more you had to go) of the trail was more challenging physically with a vartiety of hills to climb and changing topography. 3-hours into the hike we found a felled log that conveniently served as a bench and tucked into the ham sandwiches I'd made that morning.

3. Survive till Denbies wine estate. The second "half" of the hike was more flat topography wise but there were a few times where we were under the canopy of the trees for what seemed like ages wondering when we would see the light of day again. The thought of sipping some sparkling wine kept us going. We finally came out into the light (woohoo!) on a hill coincidentally named Denbies Hill and new we were close. After about a mile or 2 more of navigating through poor signs (increasingly desperate for the hike to be over), we finally found the vineyard wine shop. 3 small samples each and 2 bottles tucked into the backpack later we started our journey home.

4. Dinner and train home. With feet in pain and the added weight of 2 wine bottles, we trduegd along the last mile of the hike to Dorking in search of Sunday roast. The first and only pub we found stopped serving food at 3 (it was about 18:30 by this time) so we quickly changed plans to a beer for the road before catching a train home. On the slow torturous walk (aching legs/feet) from the train station to the flat, we settled on a nice big plate of steaming spaghetti at an Italian restaurant along the way.

Below are some pics of the hike (for complete pics of our walk, please visit our website)

Helios

(Aileen)
The sun gods blessed London today. It was a glorious day. Summer's here! Sun's up at 5 am these days and lingers around until around 20:30.

To kick off our first sunny London Saturday this year (NB. There may have been others but since we've been in India for most of the year we wouldn't know), we hit the tennis courts first thing in the morning, despite the Friday night hangover. Torture, but a necessary evil for the events to follow.

From tennis, we took a leisurely stroll over to Northcote Rd to pick up supplies:
-Short rack of pork ribs and 2 chicken legs from Dove (friendly neighbourhood butcher which we absolutely love!)
- 4 medium prawns at the fish monger stall (made sure to hiss at the Fat Face clothing store that now sits where the fish monger used to be)
- French salad greens and 2 medium roasting potatoes from the veg stand across the street
- Wedge of brie, half-cylinder of goats cheese, and small chunk of lincolnshire poacher at Hamish Johnston (friendly neighbourhood cheese store - a true gem of nortcote Rd)
- Rustic baguette at the bread stand

Back home to quickly pop the £25 Bandol rose (which we bought on a whim one rainy day last week to honor a day such as today) in the fridge, pack up the blankies, books, iPods etc before heading across the street to the park. Picked a nice spot and planted oursleves there, with cheese, baguette and wine until about 18:00.


Then it was back home for our first patio BBQ of the year - to negate the gains of our post-India/Vietnam diet , drink more wine, and chill until the sun went down.



Good stuff.

For, tomorrow I've somehow convinced Ed that a 7 hour walk through the North Downs Way (a national trail south of London) was a desirable thing. The "carrot" I dangled was that Denbies (an English Vineyard that produces excellent sparking wine) is along the path.