Toscana

Siena - the penultimate Tuscan town

Tuscans seemed to have developed their diet specifically for cyclists.

There is a specialty food here called Pane Forte.  Pane Forte means literally “strong bread”.  It resembles bread in much the same way that granite resembles Play-Doh.  I would say that it is kind of like Christmas Cake but, unlike Christmas Cake, you cannot use if for building material or as a lethal weapon.  It is loaded with all kinds of nuts, dried fruit and various and sundry unidentified high carbohydrate substances all cemented together with flour.  This means that it will send your blood sugar through the roof quickly and for a prolonged period. 

I like it.

I would not suggest, however, that one should eat this on a regular basis unless you are cycling and burning calories like mad.   If you are cycling for a prolonged period of time and are climbing a lot of hills it is the perfect snack.  It has the advantage over the traditional power-bars in that, not only does it give you fuel to burn but it makes your workout worth more because of the additional weight.  It probably wouldn’t work as well for running because if you stick it in your back pocket there is a good chance you will trip over your pants.

A wild boar is a fearsome creature.  He (or she) has large fearsome tusks, cunning intelligence, tremendous strength and a really bad attitude.  Just what one needs for cycling in Tuscany.  Except for the tusks, of course.  There is a thing called sympathetic magic.  Sympathetic magic means that you can take on the properties of something by being in close contact with it or being associated with it.   Hence the use of rhino horn as an aphrodisiac, the association of sports teams with mighty beasts, and the belief that a big loud expensive car means you are well endowed.  Certain primitive cultures believed that if you ate the heart of your brave enemy you would receive his (or her) courage.  So, the logic goes – if I ate the wild boar I would inherit his strength, cunning and aggressiveness.  If you carry that logic to it’s conclusion - eating beef would be a bad thing.  Beef cattle are castrated, stupid and docile.   Chicken would be even worse.

Wild boar is another Tuscan specialty.  Most restaurants serve it in one form or another – as a stew, as a part of their pasta sauce or on it’s own.  It is actually quite delicious.  So I thought I should eat a lot of wild boar and do the sympathetic magic thingy.  It appears to be working – I have been grumpy, I snort a lot, I think I need dental work, shaving is taking a lot longer and Telen tells me I am getting really boring.  As far as the strength and cunning goes, I think it is going to take more than eating a nasty, hairy pig with bad teeth to endow me with that.

 I'm thinking it might be time to cut down on my Wild Boar intake

Since it is early spring here we are not getting the quality of food that we had the last few times we were here.  The last times we were here it was harvest time and all the good food was coming in from the fields and, man, it was delicioso!  Don’t get me wrong; the food here has been great.  It is just interesting to see on the menus the terms “highest quality canned” or “the best quality frozen”.  When we go into the botegas (grocery stores) we hardly see any fresh veggies except for artichokes.  We are spoiled in Canada in that we get fresh veggies in our grocery stores all year because we have no shame in importing from Mexico or Peru or even (shudder) California.  Italians do not import because they believe no one else can produce as good a food as they do. 

They could be right.

The one place Italy falls down is breakfast.   Breakfast is more like a quick snack and usually entails some bready things like croissants or buns and an espresso knocked back like a vodka shot.  I, personally, love eating breakfast.  I usually wake up hungry and grouchy and I want MY BREAKFAST.  I want eggs, meat and lots of coffee.  This does not happen here.  If you ask for American-style coffee they just dilute some espresso and serve it to you with a sneer and an apology that they don’t have a gun to go with it.

Italians love their espresso.  This little espresso maker makes 50 cups

Another place that Tuscany doesn’t do so well food-wise is bread.   They always give you bread at the beginning of the meal.  You know they are going to give you bread because you can hear them cutting it in the kitchen.  Most restaurants have a large wooden box similar to that in which you might keep firewood in which they keep their bread.  This allows the bread to develop an interesting texture.  It is not that the bread gets stale -it is more that the crust becomes like a shell - a turtle shell.  When bread gets stale it crumbles and breaks and develops sharp edges when you bite it.  Tuscan bread bends and bends and finally snaps like a green branch.  Somehow they manage to make it with no flavour.  It is an area that I feel requires some improvement.

Siena is a University town. It turned out we were staying right next door to the Faculty of Pharmacy

Life has been tough in Siena.  We get up in the morning and get breaky then head out to see what there is to see.  At about 12:30 or 1:00 pm we find a likely restaurant and have some lunch.  After lunch we head back to our room for a siesta.  About 4:30 we head back to the center of town and find a gelateria and indulge in some gelato to tide us through to suppertime.  Restaurants don’t usually open until 7:30 so we explore until then when we indulge in great Italian food.  Life could be worse!

Italians may not be the most efficient culture in the world.  In fact I think they might rank somewhere in the lower percentile in that respect.  I believe the reason for that is that they don’t worry too much about being efficient – it just gets in the way of enjoying the moment.  Enjoying the moment is what Italy is all about.  They love to visit with each other, make friends, enjoy their food and work on looking good.  They may not be the most efficient culture but what they do, they do with style!

We saw this cute little old guy taking flowers in to his sweetie. Notice the Italian cut pants - very stylish!

 Telen writes:

Yes, “looking good” seems to be important here for the Italians in general.  There is no such thing as “fragrance free” zone.  We visited a local pharmacy a couple of times to buy some toiletries and each time were given free samples of cologne and fragrant lotions.  I was quite overwhelmed by the strong scent of after-shave when being helped by a local policeman.  Makeup and accessories are essential here.  I noticed a lot of young men wearing stylish scarves to match with their outfit.  I have been told that unemployment rate is high here (up to 25%) for people under 30 but in Siena and Rome, these young adults do not behave like unemployed people.

I managed to “drag” Rand into an Italian clothing store to get some stylish slim cut pants.  He looks so good and feels so comfortable in them that we went back the next day to buy a second pair.  Boy, he was really strutting on the street!  I think the Italians have it right all along, i.e. dress stylishly with confidence and happiness follows.

The road to Siena

The Road through "La Crete".  It is not as benign as it looks.  Notice the truck on the far left of the picture.  I passed him going up the hill. 

We have made it to Siena, the penultimate hill town.

Unlike the other hill towns we have encountered in Tuscany it is not on a mountain – it is on a hill.  Unlike the other hill towns that are usually organized as a main street with a series of small alleys and roads branching off Siena is organized differently.  The way Siena was planned was to get a pig that had been into the fermented beer mash and follow it around, marking the path, as it tried to cross the top of a hill in search of a comfortable place to sleep it off.  Once that was done the builders got into the wine and built the city.

Picturesque - yes, organized – no.

Telen, unfortunately, picked up a nasty upper respiratory bug and was unable to ride with me from Montalcino to Siena.  I arrived in Siena by bicycle – she arrived by Mercedes.  I am trying to think now why that was considered unfortunate…

The day I left Montalcino was the day spring arrived in Tuscany.  I left Montalcino with all the paraphernalia on that I had been in the habit of wearing on our rides previous.  I had on leg warmers, arm warmers, ear warmers, long-fingered gloves, booties, a fleece shirt and a jersey over top.  I looked as if I was headed to Antarctica.  About 15 km into the trip I arrived at an Abbey where I ducked into the washroom and came out sans everything but the shorts, and jersey.  It was already 20^o.  I felt about 10 kg lighter although my pack felt 10 kg heavier.

The La Crete area between Montalcino and Siena

The ride to Siena was a challenge at times.   Although I will admit that riding in Tuscany in general was a challenge at times.  Leaving Montalcino was a 9 km downhill ride and since I am a very cautious downhiller by the time I got to the bottom my forearms were aching from squeezing the brakes and I was afraid the brake pads were going to spontaneously combust.  Shortly thereafter there was a 7 km uphill.   I was afraid my quads were going to spontaneously combust.  

So, I kept warm.

At one point on the ride a couple of dogs came running over to the side of the road barking at me like I was a pork chop.  I happened to be feeling pretty cocky at that point (they were behind a fence) so I barked back in my deepest, most threatening manner.  That stopped the barking suddenly as the dogs just stared at me and then they looked at each other in confusion. 

“What did he just say?”

“Something about a toaster, I think.  Foreigners!  Probably Canadian with that atrocious accent!”

Home of the confused dogs.  Notice the olive trees in the foreground

I finally came to the top of hill and saw Siena off in the distance looking like the Emerald City.  There were no hills between Siena and me and it looked like a straight shot to a soft chair, food and water.   So why was the road turning away from the nice flat prairie and heading from those nasty looking hills?  Italians – sadistic bunch!

Lunch break on the road - at Asciano

The last stretch to Siena was on a major road.  The instructions on my itinerary/map said, ”Is traffic road but ok, you have shoulder” The instructions were correct.   I do have shoulder – in fact I have 2- albeit narrow ones.  The road, however, did not.  I was at the mercy of the notorious Italian drivers.  But let me tell you about Italian drivers.  If you are in another car you are fair game and Lord have mercy on your soul!  If you are on a bicycle they treat you as if you could strike them down with lightning.  I was impressed with the courtesy they accorded me as I grunted, panted and sweated along their highway.

I rolled into Siena via the Porte Pispini and off the edge of my road map.  Now I had to find my way to our accommodation, Telen, food and a soft chair.   The tour company had given me a map of Siena with little tiny, itty-bitty, writing on it and a highlighted route to our hotel.  With my 61-year-old eyes it looked to me like a dirty piece of paper with a yellowish streak on it.  Not good.

Then I remembered that somewhere in my over-loaded pack was a pair of reading glasses.  I don’t have that kind of forethought.  That had to be Telen’s idea.  So I sat on the side of the road and pulled everything out of my pack and, sure enough, on the bottom of the pack was a pair of sweat-marinated reading glasses that had a large scratch across the visual field but were serviceable nonetheless.  So I read the map and saw the name of the street I was supposedly on and looked around for the street sign.  In these medieval hill towns the street signs are carved into the sides of the stone buildings.   The only sign I could see did not correspond to anything I had on the map.

Unlike the Emerald City, the streets of which are paved with gold, the streets of Siena are cobbled.  I was riding a road bike with narrow tires and very high tire pressure.  That meant that as I rode the streets of Siena my teeth chattered and my eyes shook. Finding my way by looking at streets signs carved occasionally into the sides of buildings was like trying to read a book while operating a jack-hammer.  However, between stopping at various intersections, switching glasses back and forth and sheer dumb luck I found approximately where the hotel was.   No hotel, however.

At that point I got a text from Telen asking me where I was – she was waiting for me at the Porte Pispini.  I have this little cheap utility phone with little a little tiny telephone keyboard with little tiny keys.   My hands are best described as early Neanderthal.  So, I tried to text her back but my phone kept making up words that I didn’t want and sending them off.  

“At h ug ug  ug.”

 “I a mbmbmb.”

“I”

So she texted me back saying, “Are you trying to say you are at the hotel?”

“Y, nhn” 

“Did you fall and hit your head on something?”

“N uh uh 23#”

“Ok, I will meet you there”

The hotel was right there.  They just did not have any signs anywhere – just an open door.  Telen arrived about 20 minutes later, showed me the hotel and dug out a luscious picnic lunch.  She is a gem!

Such a sight for sore eyes (and bum)  Telen waiting for me at Siena

Telen writes:

Shortly after arriving in Montalcino by bike, I developed a wicked case of upper respiratory infection.  I had mixed feelings when I saw Rand taking off on his bike to Siena.  On the one hand, I was secretly pleased that I would not have to struggle up those LONG HILLS.  But on the other hand, I would not have the opportunity to share the adventure.  So, I was picked up by Alessandro, in his Mercedes, along with our luggage and off we went to Siena.  Alessandro was another typical Italian man i.e. wearing a suit and tie and very charming.  He owns the gelateria and a wine shop in Montalcino.  He spoke much better English than my Italian so he gave quite a lot of interesting information about the surrounding land and people.  We arrived in Siena after a 45 minute drive with normal breathing and lack of sweat.  Rand arrived by bike after 4 hours, hot, sweaty and hungry.