{"id":13371,"date":"2018-02-03T10:16:49","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T23:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.anneskyvington.com.au\/?p=13371"},"modified":"2024-12-11T22:42:26","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T11:42:26","slug":"tuscan-village-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anneskyvington.com.au\/tuscan-village-holiday\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tuscan Village Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"
Italy: Fast Cars<\/em><\/h4>\n
Driving on the autostrada<\/em> is a relief after Rome. Watch on the right<\/em>, my partner says repeatedly, having been traumatised when the mirror on our rented manual Fiat Punta was flattened against a truck in Rome\u2019s crowded streets. I’m the driver, having learnt to conduire<\/em> \u00e0 la droite<\/em> in France, as a student there. Mark will prepare lots of fresh dishes, based on heavenly tomatoes, plucked straight from the fields. When we get to the outskirts of Siena, we ask for directions to our destination.<\/p>\n
Tonni: an Etruscan Village<\/em><\/h3>\n
A rusty sign on a hedge, after winding roads and an unsealed gravelly stretch, marks the hamlet. First settled during the Etruscan era. Dogs, cats, a few children and a smiling woman with false teeth greet us. Several small cars are parked on the narrow gravel street, mediaeval buildings, the lot set in field and forest\u2014oak, laurel, elms, conifers, and the ever-present cypress pines.<\/p>\n
Our Australian contact, Sarah, has a red nose from working in the vegetable garden. After thirty years in Italy, her English is measured, as if under the influence of the syllable-timed rhythm of Italian. She shows us into a stone building through a doorway level with the street. A pitch-black hall shared with the downstairs neighbours envelops us. Sarah’s apartment is at the top of a dark flight of stone stairs. The door opens onto a large light-filled room, sparsely furnished in a rustic style. High ceilings. Large windows. Views of green forests, glimpsed past azure skies, and pink and red geraniums in window boxes.<\/p>\n
Our bed-sitter is in an adjoining barn-like structure downstairs. Minimally renovated inside, it comprises five square metres of space and a small shower\/toilet room. Like all buildings in the village, the exterior remains untouched. It was once a stonemason\u2019s workshop.<\/p>\n
credit nature.mdc.mo.gov<\/p><\/div>\n
I\u2019m washing my face in the bathroom. A small green spotted lizard falls into the wash basin. Sarah picks up a scorpion from the floor and squashes it. I find one or two others nearby during the next few days. These are some of the minute horrors of living in the first world<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Our host shows us over her<\/em> vegetable garden and surrounding areas. Then we go with her to the dam on a farmer\u2019s property nearby, bumping along an unsealed road, the trees covered in dust that clings like snow to the branches. We have a swim in the murky green waters, surrounded by new-growth forest. It\u2019s quiet, peaceful and reminds me of Lock Ness or the Lago di Como<\/em>. I wonder about what is beneath the surface; Sarah says frogs and fish. I ask her if the farmer minds it being used for swimming. She says no. Ownership seems more blurred here than in Australia.<\/p>\n
Fausto with the lean and hungry look<\/em>, Sarah\u2019s neighbour, is an ex-hunter turned municipal employee in road maintenance. He is married to an archaeologist, who works in a nearby museum; she is always escaping in a small orange van, leaving him to look after the house and the kids. I hear him shouting at them to shut up when I\u2019m passing the doorway. They have an ex-hunting dog called Bella, who is blind and deaf, but enjoys just lazing around on the doorstep, a far cry from living in a cage, as she once did.<\/p>\n
The couple on the other side of us have built an underground tunnel to join up the kitchen with the rest of their house. The mediaeval stone facades must not be touched.<\/p>\n
There is also the Communist<\/em>, whom I see every day in the fields, wearing a wide-brimmed leather hat, tending the vegetables and feeding the rooster that crows every morning and wakes us up.<\/p>\n
Tuscany Colours, Slow Food<\/em><\/h3>\n
On the way to the town of Siena, we pass by the burnt oranges, dark greens, lighter greens, straw-colours, browns, clays and off-whites of the landscape. A bright yellow-and-green field of sunflowers, their funny faces turned towards the sun, flashes into view with the shock of a Van Gogh painting. We find a wonderful Sicilian seafood restaurant in a hotel and have a hearty lunch: swordfish and a mixed seafood platter. I use my dictionary to interpret the menu.<\/p>\n
Outside, we walk along cobbled streets to explore the quiet village. Time seems to hover in the stark midday sun. We hear faint sounds of life, coming from inside stone houses. Everyone has gone to sleep, Rip Van Winkle <\/em>style. As if for a hundred years.<\/p>\n
Siena: Beauty, Danger<\/em><\/h3>\n
Today is the day of Il Palio<\/em>\u2014the horse race\u2014in Siena. The most dangerous one in the world according to a recent post<\/a>.<\/p>\n