DAY 3 in Tuscany Region

DAY 4 (30 Sept 07, SUN) : TUSCAN HILLS - GREVE - GIMIGNANO - FLORENCE

 

We visited Chianti Hill, the wine-town of Greve. Wine Tasting!!! According to the tour guide, its seasonal visit and Sept is the month when they harvet the grapes. The 1 hour ride we saw a lot of greenery, hills full of grape tree! The person in charge gave brief introductions on the different harvest and followed by wine tasting.

 

The most enjoyable part is photo taking with grape plant…. Not much grapes left, mostly chao ta liao…. Maybe because it already been plucked for making wine.

 

2 hours ride, we arrived in Gimignano, it’s a small town that look more or less like Siena. I dun really like the place. We had this bigger than our face de pizza and a ham cheese sandwich for the sake of using the toilet! Toilet in Italy is like 宝! Even public loo which cost about SGD 1 buck per visit is so hard to find! The tour guide told us to just act blur and walk into any restaurant to use the loo…. I tried and got shouted by the old ang mo cha bo at the counter…. I mean really loud shouting… so we bought a sandwich and coffee for sharing which again the waitress auntie gave us a disgusted look Cos Italian culture, they rather waste the food than to share!

 

 

 

Another 2 hours ride we reach Florence. Heard a lot on how beautiful it was….Naaaaa….. crowded with people! We saw 2 of the copies of David, one on the hill and one in the town. The local tour guide gave us a history of Florence on the famous bridge and Duomo, how the place always get flooded…. I do agree that the Piazza Signoria is a like an open-air museum. There are a lot of sculptures on display but they are not the original piece. We saw a real one versa the copy version. There is really a great difference. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The things I enjoyed most in Florence? The 70 euro portrait that the local street artiste drew for us. He took about 1 hour to complete. It is a nice experience! To be drew by the Europe street artiste on Florence oldest bridge!

 

Another thing not to be missed is the Florentine steak….we walk very fast back to the restaurant cos we are running a bit late. As we order our food, we realized that we forget to buy mineral water. In Italy, another problematic issue is drinking water. So troublesome. Have to prepare our own drinking water. A small normal size cost about 1 to 2 euro, the 1.5 litre one, if you are lucky you can get at 0.70 euro. The cheapest would be in supermarket. Well… for the past few days we are buying the at least 1.50 euro version cos we din know of the supermarket! Nick say we would need to spend SGD 50 for drinking water in Italy…. Now I know why in Italy so hard to find toilet cos they dun drink water!

 

We can’t really find the 1.5L one on the street so we went back for the food first. In Italy, the appetizer is either a soup or pasta. Usually Italian would order pasta / spaghetti followed by a main course. Nick had spaghetti and grilled chicken breast. I had the Florentine steak. When being asked what side dishes to go with, I asked for vegetables, the waiter ask me “Beans?” I said “hot vegetables”. He ask me again “All beans?” I said “Green vegetables” He say “oh…” … I was being serve a big bowl of green beans!!! And that cost 5 euros! When we finished our meal and made payment, we gave them about 7.50 euros as tips, so are the rest of our tour mate, we were being told that dinning in restaurant, we should leave at least 10% as tipping. As we leave the restaurant, the waiters grin from eyes to eyes and said “bye bye, Good Asian”… Kaos…. I damm bui song…. I feel that in their eyes they only see $$$$$ lar…..