Bella Toscana
Soft rolling hills, studded with lines of pencil thin Cypress trees, hillsides fat with vines and olive groves.
All this combined with a richness of history from pre-antiquity Etruscan civilisation up through the Roman period and on into the creative tsunami that was the Italian Renaissance; churches, castles and buildings that makes my head spin in delight.
We’ve visited the Etruscan city at Voltarro, the medieval towns of San Gimignano as well as the powerhouse of the Renaissance, Florence or Firenze as the Italians call it … (dunno why they can’t spell the name of their own city …tchaa! 😀 )
The main highlight for me though was visiting Vinci; birth place of the great Leonardo da Vinci of course. The breadth of his skills as a painter, scientist and engineer has really been brought home to me. I always knew he was a genius but visiting the house where he was born, the church where he was baptised and seeing the town and countryside he lived and grew up in has somehow made it so much more real to me.
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