Tuscany with Grandchildren Part 2 - July 2011

Wednesday

We left early this am for Siena, a remarkably beautiful walled city about one hour drive south. We parked just outside the city and took the escalator into town.

Once inside the walled old city, Ariel gave us a lecture on the history of Siena...he went into great detail and even told us about the famous horse race and the sports teams of Siena.

We went to the weekly market and shopped for locally made handicrafts.

We walked around this very picturesque city until it was time for lunch. 

There were artists everywhere doing these amazing sketches in chalk on the roadway.

We ate lunch in the famous Piazza del Campo, site of the famous annual horse race. 

 We met some people from Modiin whose children know Nava and Ezra.

We visited the magnificent shul, but were not permitted to take pics; but here is what the shul looks like from our first trip to Tuscany a few years earlier. The man in the photo is the head of the community, Eli Rabbani.

After leaving Siena we decided to visit the old walled city of Monteriggioni and spent some time exploring that city. 

We left at 5 pm and thought that we could eat in Florence at Ruth's restaurant and still get an early night. Well it did not work out that way. 

We tried to start our car and it would not start.

So we called Europcar service and they said they would send a tow truck and try to fond us another car. After sitting and waiting for 2 hours, during which time our grandchildren were calm and very supportive, we tried the car and it started. So we drove to Florence airport where we had arranged another van in place of this one. When we arrived in Florence we were told that the reason why the car was not working was because we had put regular gas instead of diesel ... No one in Rome had told us that this car needed diesel. 

They gave us a brand new Volkswagen van which also has 7 seats but minimal luggage space...we are going to have to be creative next week when we load everyone and their luggage for the trip back to Rome 

By this time it was almost 9 PM so we decided to see if Ruth restaurant was still open .... It was and we went...great meal!!!... after the meal, we walked next door to the Great Synagogue of Florence and got some great night shots...

We made it back by 11 pm and we are all going go sleep to prepare for a busy day tomorrow

Hope all is well

All the best from Tuscany 

Fran and David, Nava, Ariel, Kayla and Ezra 

Tuscany with Grandchildren - Part 1 - July 2011

This should be a great trip.

We are now flying from Toronto to Rome via Frankfurt and will meet up with our 4 oldest grandchildren, Nava and Ariel, both 17, Kayla and Ezra, both 15, who are all flying in from Israel.

We will spend 8 days touring Tuscany and will end up with a day in Rome. The kids will fly on and we will remain for a few days in Rome. 

The hope now is that when we arrive, the kids will be waiting for us. They arrive one hour before us and by googling pictures of the Rome Airport, we have designated one of the meeting places as the area where they should wait our arrival.

We made our short one hour connection in Frankfurt and when we exited the doors into the arrivals area in Rome, there were 4 smiling grandchildren waiting for us!

We headed over to the car rental facility and rented our van from Europcar. After we somehow got all the luggage loaded, we noticed that part of the front dashboard was falling apart and promptly asked for a replacement vehicle. So we unload and then reload in a new van....not the best way to start a memorable trip....hopefully everything goes smoothly from here. 

We had anticipated that there would be space limitations both the first day and last day of our journey, as that would be the only time that we would have all 6 of us with all of our luggage in the van at the same time. Therefore we bought a canvas collapsible roof bag which attaches to the roof with straps and holds a few luggers. 

On this the first leg of our trip, we thankfully did not need it...tho' the kids were packed into the van like sardines as we began our 3 hour journey north. 

We stopped on the way to pick up some essentials and armed with our kosher Italy list, we roamed the aisles of the supermarket.

Our first stop was the little town of Pitigliano, also known as the Jerusalem of Italy. The city is built on the edge of a cliff and before entering the town, we stood across the valley and took some great pics of the amazing town.

We had given each of the kids an assignment:  to choose a city that we would be visiting and to act as our tour guide. Nava had chosen Pitigliano and proceeded to educate us about the history of the place and its Jewish community. We were impressed...she came prepared with photocopies and handouts!

For several hundred years, Pitigliano was a frontier town between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and, to the south, the Papal States. When the Papal State expelled Jews from Rome, Jews fled here and re-estbalished their community as it was the closest place just outside the borders of Rome.

After the promulgation of racial laws under Nazi influence, all the Jews of the town reportedly escaped capture with the help of their Christian neighbors.

Although there are almost no Jews left in town, not enough to provide a minyan, the synagogue (1598, with furnishings of the 17th and 18th centuries) is still officiated from time to time. It was restored in 1995.

The town itself really resembles the old city of Jerusalem with its narrow alleyways and stone faced buildings. The kids enjoyed roaming around the streets as we awaited the opening of the shul and Jewish museum.

When the shul opened, we and a number of other visitors explored the old winery and matza bakery below the building.

As opposed to all our previous trips, there was no pressure on me to shoot all the pictures as we now had a professional photographer, our eldest grandchild Nava, travelling with us. 

Between the two of us, we must have shot about 2500 pics on this 8 day journey. We would spend every evening comparing our shots. 

We spent a little more time walking the narrow alleyways, ate lunch and then packed into the car and headed up to our Villa just outside Florence in the heart of Tuscany.

Our villa was in a huge residential estate and judging from the barn doors, our unit must have been the stables at one time. There were two bedrooms (Fran and I in one and the girls in the other) and 2 pullout couches in the living room for the boys. It was quaint and ideal for the six of us. We set up shop and proceeded to prepare the first of many meals.

The next morning was Shiva Asar B'Tammuz and as we would all be fasting, we decided to head out and spend the morning in the market in Florence, return to the villa and relax the rest of the day.

Definitely not kosher!!!!

We waited till the fast ended and then had a great meal of salads and eggs to break the fast. Our real touring begins tomorrow with a day in Siena.

The wifi reception was better in this one spot in the villa so we all took turns standing by this window.

Ezra really wanted to try and have a bath in this Real Roman Bath...but we convinced him that the main washroom was better for him....

To be continued.....