Chianti Hills

(These are the signs you are faced with when you are trying to find your way around in Italy!)

10 April 2008: We are now in the Chianti hills, south of Florence, at the campground, Villaggio Norcenni Girasole Club, in the town of Figline Valdarno. (http://www.ecvacanze.it/) The campground is one of the few four-star campgrounds in Tuscany, and we decided to take advantage of it to have a good rest period (as well as shower and laundry time!) It’s more of a suburb of Florence than I expected. I was hoping to be right in the middle of wineries, where we could drive around and taste. (Although, I’m sure we could, if we had the motivation.) But, we are clean, Kai’s having fun playing with all of English kids in the playground and they have a great restaurant that we are spending lots of money at called “Ristorante Vecchio”. (For any of the Del Vecchio family reading this, there’s also a horse ranch here called “Vecchio Texas”!)

Since being in the Tuscany region, the rugged terraced mountains of Northern Italy/Cinque Terre have not turned into gentle rolling hills “quilted” with vineyards after vineyards with a typical yellow-orange colored Tuscan house, or a medieval-looking old stone building with a tall tower. The hills remind us a lot of the South Belgium/North France/Bordeaux area, and the houses look similar to the ones in the Provence region of France. We’ve seen more tourists than ever before and heard more English than anywhere else in Europe, Provence and the French Riviera probably coming second place. Pizza and pasta is everywhere! We haven’t had problems getting cash like in Spain – phew!

A couple of the large grocery stores in Italy seem to have a good, yet not huge selection of food for me to buy. So today, I’m trying for the first time to make “camper” chicken stock, with “non-GMO” chicken wings and organic leeks, carrot, celery and herbs de Provence, while sipping on (very non-organic!) Kir Royals a la Lavande, which are now being made with Procesco, the Italian version of the French Champagne. (And, Sean joining me with his standard, Heineken, which he says tastes much better than in the states!) When the stock’s done, I’ll strain it and tomorrow make soup by poaching some organic chicken breast with more veggies. I find it very weird that the grocery stores only sell organic breast. What the heck do they do with all the other organic chicken parts?!?! (Still no kombucha or goat milk though!)