While our guide was reeling off some stats about this and that she mentioned something about exports. Looking at the countryside through the window, I thought perhaps Tuscany's greatest export was the creation of about a hundred different cook books a week! I think anyone who IS anyone in the cooking world has done a cookbook on this region at some time or another. At first I thought it was all just a lot of hype until I actually tasted Tuscan cuisine by a world renowned chef, then I changed my mind. But more of that later.
FLORENCE.
I knew a little bit about Florence from: T.V. Movies, and the facts we had picked up on the tour about Michelangelo and Da Vinci, from the other parts of the Tour. What I was not prepared for was the roll call of how many great people in ALL the creative arts who were either Florentines by birth, of patronized by the great families of the city. There is an avenue in the city where lines of statues in the classical tradition celebrate these men, and there are a lot of them!
Of course, no trip to Florence would be complete without a trip to The Ponte Vecchio ( The Old Bridge) it still had shops on it, and it still looked as magnificent as it did in such films as "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie." And "Tea With Mussolini." Both Maggie Smith films coincidentally.
Perhaps Julie would be better at describing the Tuscan dinner cooked by a chef named Librare (free) who has been on Australian T.V. I ended up feeling very spoilt by it all and buying the C.D of the singer and guitarist who entertained us.
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