Travelfood

It is easy to write about travel in Italy. Before I have written about Rome and the Naples region, but there is a lot to experience north of Rome as well. Tuscany is often linked with wineries and Florentine art, but there is a lot else in central Italy. Bologna is the capital of culinary treats, San Gimignano is the city of medieval towers and Pisa is known for – well, everyone knows what, and Siena is a combination of everything great in Tuscany.

What is less known is that there is just a short train ride from Pisa to La Spezia / Cinque Terre, which is a set of beautiful fishing villages in gorgeous coastline settings. From Pisa you can also take the train to Livorno, from where there are daily ferry crossings to for example the island of Elba or Bastia in French Corsica. Wherever you travel, you can see hills with densely built houses or someone’s private castle on top, viewing wine fields below.

During my first trips to Florence it felt as the most remote and most interesting Tuscan villages are not accessible by train, so I did the impossible. I rented a car in order to drive in Italian traffic. When you return to Florence, you suddenly notice being on a driveway with five lanes and you need to access the furthest lane in order to reach the city. These five lanes are of course theoretical lanes and they are crossed with high speed anyhow and anywhere. Although I am aware of the extreme Italian traffic, I have avoided renting cars after that driving.

Why is Italian food so tasty? Ordinary ingredients, ordinary spices and ordinary cooking time, but still the result is so stunningly good and without exception. Maybe this is just the simple recipe for good stuff. Can you make the conclusion that the food we eat in our home countries do not contain ordinary ingredients, ordinary spices and that our food does not cook long enough to be juicy and tasty? Yes, you can! Ordinary food such as Panini, focaccia, gnocchi, Florentine beans, penne and Parma ham is good because it has an Italian sound to it.

Europe, food, Italy, travel, travel experiences, Tuscany