Winter in Tuscany

Position: 43°05’30.0″N 11°46’48.2″E

“Not many people travel the way we do,” I commented in passing to Carol. “No,” she agreed, “they don’t.” Driving up the switchbacks towards the towers of San Gimignano, we drank in the bare trees and vineyards of Tuscany on all sides of us. Warm sunlight poured out of clear blue skies and fed our inner lizards. Outside the air was crisp, even frosty in the shade. Having just landed from drizzly Istanbul after a couple of days of medical tourism, Italy was already a better, more appropriate place to spend Boxing Day.

My travel comment referred to our recent and creative management of some airline change fees. Change fees, the fees levied by airlines should you for any reason decide to adjust your itinerary, now often outstrip the cost of booking another seat on another airline to another destination. Which is exactly what we did.

The calculation is simple. If rebooking costs $X, where can you fly for $X-1? Having booked on low-cost airlines, the fees were especially silly, so we flew to Rome for a week and hired a car. Done correctly, you also retain rights to your abandoned seat allowing you to check-in and no-show, thus, paying back a little of the inconvenience and opportunity cost the airline forced on you. The ‘enshittification’ of air travel began long before Corey Doctorow coined his neologism. (Enough whining – ed.)

Sienna

Sienna had been stunning and mercifully quiet. Pedestrians rule in all Tuscany’s hill towns. Streets lined with rows of four and five storey buildings radiate down the steep hillsides. The few cars and trucks navigating the narrow lanes are there strictly for deliveries and bone fide residents. Small clutches of people, lots of three generation families, moved through the streets like boluses of panettone passing through an open gullet. Sunshine at any time of the year in Italy invokes the gelato reflex and ice cream sellers did brisk trade. Unlike the hot summer months when Sienna is massively overcrowded, the cool weather kept the ice cream from melting and dripping stickily onto the cobblestones. It was another benefit to travelling in the off-off season.

A tour of the cathedral is obligatory and your ticket gives you access to the Opera Metropolitana del Duomo (cathedral museum) and the Facciatone, a narrow, two-level observation bridge with views of the surrounding valleys. Access to the Facciatone is up a shoulder-width spiral staircase suitable for one-way traffic only. Docents herd the tourist cats on a strict schedule.

Deadweight

Sienna’s Piazza del Campo was all the more inspiring for its relative calm. Taking a breath and closing our eyes, we could imagine the thudding of horse’s hooves and shouts of the crowd during the Palio, a twice-yearly horse race held in July and August. Having only seen videos of the race, walking around the piazza gave me a new appreciation for the insanity of the event. Here’s what I learned about it:

The plaza slopes downhill as well as towards the centre. To provide traction to the slippery brick and cobblestone surface, dirt is trucked in for race week. Crowds sit around the edges of the piazza and stand in a makeshift paddock in the centre. Ten horses participate and rules are sparse. Keeping with tradition, riders may harry their opponents by shoving, kicking and whipping them. All of which seems suitably medieval for an 800-year-old race.

Winning horses need not have a rider. Which seems fair. After all, any horse self-actualised enough to run the Palio shouldn’t need a deadweight human to win. By tradition, the second to last horse to cross the line is the loser. Jockeying for last place also has a nice ring to it. Anyway, we could only imagine what it would be like in the full heat of summer with thousands of sweaty tourists watching the race with their iPhones held aloft.

San Gimignano

San Gimignano proved equally relaxed, albeit on a smaller scale than Sienna. Christmas spotlights bathed the tallest bell towers in greens, purples, blues and reds. Seven hundred years ago the town boasted 72 towers, now it has about five. Exploring the city walls took us into a closed garden with a few olive trees. A local artist in full costume performed scenes from Dante’s Inferno. His was a full recitation, not a reading. I couldn’t begin to tell you what he was saying, but he gave the town’s historical links to Dante an air of authenticity.

Our comfy B&B, the I Coppi, sat a short walk from the city walls. The breakfast room with its temporary walls provided a wonderful view of the foothills and mountains to the north. In warmer weather and in full bloom I’m sure the view is even more amazing.

Montepulciano

Piling back into the car we headed south towards the beating heart of Tuscany’s wine country. Our choice of hotel, the Agriturismo Nobile, proved prudent. Its comfortable, quiet rooms, sit above a wonderful restaurant. The hotel also provides a shuttle service to the town. It’s not far, but we figured we’d hitch a ride there and walk back. Our host provided a map and advice on what to see.

In the church square the Christmas market was still in full swing. After a thorough browsing of the knick-knacks and cheeses, we headed north towards the big stone gate at the far end of town. Later, after poking around a couple of churches and drinking a hot chocolate, I consulted my digital hiking guide. That led us back through the south gate towards our hotel. Walking through the ancient cemetery, the ruler-straight road angled down steeply. At the bottom, we crossed the main road and picked up the trail. It led us through fallow vineyards and fields heavy with chilly, late afternoon earthen damp. The sun dipped below the horizon just as we reached the hotel.

At dinner that night, our host asked how we’d gotten back (since we hadn’t called for a lift). “We walked”, we said. He did a slight double-take and said, “You walked? That’s very dangerous! You must be very careful of the wild boars!” Soundly admonished, we assured him we’d gotten back in plenty of light and hadn’t heard a snort.

A Plague o’ Both Your Houses!

On cue, the next morning we both started feeling under the weather. 24 hours later, we had fully succumbed the first plague of winter. Not Covid, but some other kind of viral ick that went on to linger for weeks. Having thoroughly enjoyed the restaurant on our first two nights, dinner on the third night consisted of soup in bed for Carol and snacks for me. We extended our stay for 48 hours and felt very sorry for ourselves. Then it was time to head back to Tenerife and prepare for our trip to the States. We packed up our sniffles and headed for the airport. It wasn’t quite the Tuscan adventure we’d hoped for, but it beat hanging out in Istanbul.

Off-Off Season Travel

Is Christmas a good time to visit Italy? Given the sheer volume of spring, summer and autumn tourists these days, I’d have to say yes. Most things are open, queues are short and the dominant language is Italian. That said, many hotels close in January and February and reopen in early spring. If you’re planning an off-off season visit, I suggest doing some preparatory research to avoid disappointment. Or travel like we do, and just roll with it…

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