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Under the Tuscan Sky
We were all looking forward to our drive out to the Tuscan countryside and to explore the hilltowns of Tuscany. There is a street near the train station which is car rental central. All the major international agencies were there including some local ones. Initially, we were worried that we would not be able to find a car big enough to fit all seven of us. The first few places we visited did not have any vans available. But our luck held out and we managed to secure a station wagon that could accomodation all of us.
The first sign that our driving tour is not going to be as smooth as we hoped came when we visited the tourist information center. Expecting to pick up some driving guides and maps, we were a bit disappointed that all they had was a high-level highway network map of the region and I was the lucky guy who volunteered to navigate and that was all I had to work with !! Okay ....
Off we went regardless and our first stop was Pisa.
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Pisa
Expectations management is so important. We all expected Pisa to be a small place and we could just drive right up to the Leaning Tower. How hard could it be right ?
How wrong we were.
Unlike Australia, where everything is generally very well sign-posted and generally extremely tourist friendly with signs to all the attractions. None of these existed in Tuscany. We came to the turn-off to Pisa and we exited the freeway but there were no signs at all to the Leaning Tower ! We did the best we could and took a wild guess. We figured that sooner or later, there must be signs or we should at least be able to see the tower (we were still thinking that Pisa was going to be a small town).
Pisa is actually not that small. It was quite a developed place with sprawling residential and industrial developments and no sign of the tower. Luckily for us, Stelia has some grasp of Italian and we pulled over for directions every 5km or so. After much frustrations and many u-turns later, we finally found it !
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is so iconic that to see it for the first time "for real" was quite surreal.
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The Road to San Gimignano
Finding our way back on to the highway from Pisa was another challenge altogether. It took us about 30 minutes with lots of missed turns and u-turns before we were successfully able to get back on to the highway.
After having located the highway, we wanted to drive to San Gimignano. There were of course, no signs whatsoever to guide us. We took a combination of highways and small country roads before we finally arrived at the town also known as the medieval Manhattan. This description is easily understood as the approach road to the town provides a clear view of the medieval towers that stand over the town, evoking images of a medieval city scape that resembles the skylines of our modern cities.
2. Medieval towers of San Gimignano San Gimignano is a very quaint and charming medieval hilltown. We wished that we had more time to spend there. By the time we arrived, it was already late in the afternoon and we still had Siena to visit. Reluctantly, we gave ourselves one hours to run around the town and to soak in as much as we could.
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Tuscan Countryside
An upside for being lost for much of today driving around the Tuscan countryside was that it gave us the opportunity to see parts of this region we would otherwise have had difficulty seeing using public transportation. Much of the countryside reminded me of the scenes in the movie, Gladiator, where Maximus reminisces about his life on the farm.
4. Images of Tuscany
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Siena
Siena was our last planned stop for the day. It was a short drive from San Gimignano. Siena was the kind of town I was imagining Florence to be. Siena is a very well preserved medieval town. With the exception of a number of modern boutiques, it has very little visible trappings of the modern era.
5. Images of Siena
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It was really crazy driving around Tuscany but in retrospect, it was good fun. It was extremely stressful during the experience, but we did manage to see a lot.
Our driving adventures didn't end at Siena. We had to return the car by 9pm in Florence and we were stuck in a pretty bad traffic jam on our way back. Stelia took over the wheel for the return trip while Jimmy navigated. This gave William some much needed rest after driving for the whole day and I could de-stress after having navigated without any decent navigational aids like maps and signs !
It was quite a race against time to get the car back in time. We were weaved through the back lanes of Florence (with Hsin Hsin causing a bit of stir with the local Italian lads in a neighbouring car) but we managed to get the car back with just 10 minutes to spare. En route, we even managed quick pit stop to take this panorama of Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo.
6. Night panorama of Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo.
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