Toscana - Day 1
On Monday last week I said arvëddse (arrivederci) to my parents and my brother, and caught the train from Turin to Pisa.
While other lines have been modernised over the years - with super-fast trains now linking many cities around the peninsula, the line running along the Tyrrhenian coast is caught in a time warp.
Almost 4 hours to go from Torino to Pisa and the carriages are still the old ones I used to travel in 20 years ago, when I worked in the Tuscan city for about a year (to be fair, there isn't room in Liguria for new tracks for the high-speed trains: in some locations it's almost a miracle that the present line was build in the first place).
While I was on the train, Adrian was catching a plane at Heathrow. He was supposed to get to Pisa 30 minutes before me, but I got there first, because of technical problems with the aircraft (apparently the air crew that flew into Heathrow earlier that day were not feeling well and had symptoms on carbon monoxide poisoning, so they had to check the plane - with all the passengers on board - before it was allowed to go).
Once re-united at Pisa Airport, we collected our car and drove to (Vescovado di) Murlo, a small town in the colline Senesi which is formed of a number of separate hamlets. Vescovado has about 700 inhabitants, while the picture-perfect, medieval hamlet of Murlo not even 30.
The inhabitants are considered direct descendants of the mysterious Etruscans, thanks to the isolation of the village. (And DNA tests on them appear to give credit to the theory that the Etruscans came from modern day Turkey, since the results showed a Middle-Eastern origin).
It was quite a nice drive to Murlo. We abandoned the superstrada Pisa-Firenze as soon as possible, and drove along strade provinciali which afforded some lovely views of the countryside.
The B&B in Vescovado di Murlo was lovely. A large bedroom and bathroom in an old building, with a private sitting room/library where breakfast was served every morning. We stayed there for 4 nights.
It is furnished with antiques, and some modern art, and the gentleman who checked us in (an archaeologist/antiques dealer) was very enthusiastic about his (or his parents') place, and could have been straight off of one of the many 'bear' sites! LOL
In other news, today it's our 15th anniversary. Happy Anniversary Darling Adrian: looking forward to many, many more!
