Taking Our Time in Tuscany

The heart of the Chianti region.

We have seen a lot of wonderful European cities on this leg of the Funemployment Tour, ranging from London to St. Petersburg and Stockholm to Athens.

Each one has an energy and a beauty unique to itself. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of things to do and sites to visit in each one.

Each one is exciting. And each one is exhausting.

So when we pulled into Tavarnelle Val di Pesa in the Tuscany region of Italy, we were delighted by the lack of size and the lack of bustle.

It was exactly what we needed.

This isn’t to say that the town lacked things to do. It mostly lacked the seas of tourists that we had been wading our way through for the previous few weeks.

We arrived on a Tuesday for no other reason than it fit our schedule. Luckily for us, that was the evening each week that the town square turns into a lively marketplace.

Almost every town in Tuscany
looked like this in some way.

Bars and restaurants opened to the square, moving tables and chairs outside.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, there was a restaurant grilling steaks on the courtyard outside, and it smelled amazing.

The waiter escorted me next door to the butcher shop, where I received a two-inch steak cut in front of me. I took it back to the man at the grill, where he seasoned it with only olive oil and sea salt before throwing it over the coals.

It tasted as amazing as it smelled. With all due respect to the steaks in places like Kansas and Argentina (I have had outstanding steaks in both places), this was the best I’ve ever tasted.

We were surrounded at the restaurant – and around the town all together – by locals and people who had driven in from neighboring towns.

It was lively but also intimate and welcoming.

For five days, we started our mornings off with a run and a trip down to the town’s coffee shop/bar for some breakfast and caffeine, and then we headed out each day on excursions.

There were medieval towns and vineyards everywhere, and each one had its own uniqueness that made it different and interesting.

Sunset from near where we stayed in Tavarnelle.

Most of the towns were swarming with tourists, and that was fine.

Because at the end of each day we returned to our little hamlet in Tavarnelle, where we dined on fresh pasta and opened the wonderful bottles of wine that had discovered that day.

Overall, it was peaceful and fairly perfect.

It was just what we needed out of Tuscany.

How to Eat Your Way Through Italy

I knew we had made the right decision fairly quickly.

It’s not often that I have turned down the “meat” portion of a meal, but by this point the clothes around my midsection were already feeling a lot tighter than just an hour earlier.

And I knew we weren’t finished yet.

Even when we were in Ecuador, I could not help but look ahead to our travels to Italy. Granted, it was generally when I was eating a mediocre piece of chicken with flavorless rice.

I knew that Italy was going to be almost entirely about two things: food and wine.

Sometimes, you call this lunch, especially in Bologna.

We arrived in Bologna, a city known by some as the birthplace of Kappa Sigma and by most others as a wonderful place to fill yourself to nearly comatose.

Bologna is a beautiful medieval town, paved with cobblestone streets and shadowed by the same towers that have stood for hundreds of years.

Our plan was to see the sites while occasionally stopping for a glass of wine. And with each glass, we also were given some crackers or cheeses or cured meats. It’s possible that you could live in Italy for years without ever needing lunch.

So by 8 p.m., when our dinner reservations finally rolled around, I kind of felt like I was getting called up to the Major Leagues.

Fran and our friend Karyn, who joined us in Bologna, had been here before and talked endlessly about a restaurant they’d been to.

Osteria Broccaindosso had a lot to live up to, so we were a little disappointed to see it fairly empty upon our arrival. They handed us menus, and we weren’t quite sure what we wanted to do.

That’s when Karyn, who speaks at least a little Italian – much more than Fran or I do – told the server that we would prefer that they just start bringing us food.

It was something they knew how to do, and they did it well.

Before long, appetizers started appearing one at a time. There was salad, tomato with mozzarella, sausage with white beans, and squash flan.

The staff cleared our table and then quickly started delivering, among other things, tagliatelle with ragu, ricotta tortalini with butter and sage, and dry passatelli with zucchini.

It may go without saying, but there was far too much of each dish.

I was resettling myself in my chair, hoping some of the food would reposition and therefore open more space for more food.

That’s when the head server offered us the meat dishes.

Without a doubt, Fran saw the desperation in my eyes. I had been hearing legends about the desserts at this place. I knew it was either meat or sweets.

We hesitated, but in the end we opted to sprint straight to the finish.

Fran and Karyn (pictured) grabbed
a small share of each dessert.
I ate the rest.

Chocolate mousse was first, followed by a crème brulee. These were no individual portions. It was family style, and we were invited to take as much as we wanted.

A few minutes later, the servers pushed a nearby table up to ours. We had run out of space, and they still had more to deliver. There was apple pie, brownies with vanilla custard, chocolate cookies, and some sort of berry custard creation. There’s a very real possibility that I am missing at least 1-2 other desserts.

When we had been on a cruise through the Baltics a few weeks earlier, my entire family joked about ordering multiple desserts in the main dining room and then heading up to the buffet to get dessert. We thought we had reached some sort of new low – or high, depending on how you look at it.

In Bologna, I’m pretty sure we reached a new level.

Somehow I walked back to where we were staying, somewhat convinced I would never have to eat again.

That of course ended the following day, when we arrived in Tavarnelle and found a restaurant cooking up T-bone steaks on a grill in the town square.

It's amazing how easy charades becomes
when you are telling a butcher how big
you want your steak cut.

The waiter sent me next door to the butcher, who carved off a chunk that was at least two inches thick.

I’m pretty sure I will not go hungry on this leg of the trip.