Tuscany is for Drivers
Never mind that the road signs are incomprehensible, with every manner of blue circles, red circles, blue P’s in white fields, and my personal favorite, the dreaded red X in the red circle and the blue field which seems to shout, “Stoppa the carra righta now, and steppa out witha your handsa uppa” and you feel that whatever you do is going to be a huge Mistake. And never mind that you get lost a lot, “Did you see that sign…was that our turn…??”
This place is made for driving. The cars are small and handle like go-carts. Our little Lancia has six forward gears, a torquey little engine with ready acceleration (and 40 mpg), wide tires, and suspension that takes you around tight curves without the slightest bit of leaning.
The roads are an endless series of S-curves that murmur a constant Yeeesssssssssssssssssssssss up and down undulating hills and valleys and twisty country roads that narrow to barely a single lane going through little villages, with narrow passages between old stone walls and buildings just wide enough for one tiny car. The roads are at best two narrow lanes. When they are paved, they are smooth like racetracks, perfectly flat, no shoulder, but paved all the way to the edge with driving surface.
This makes driving a very active process, definitely not like cruising the freeway, and it takes two hands all the time, don’t even think about pouring a cup of coffee from your thermos or talking on your cell phone, it just isn’t possible. So driving is very engaging; the country roads are beautiful winding over and around the rolling Tuscan hillsides, with their soft patchwork of well-kept vineyards, wide green wheat fields, and medieval cities and towns perched like little Avalons on the tallest hills.
And then of course you are always challenged by drivers behind you who want to pass or want you to go faster; for some reason the Audi drivers are particularly aggressive, along with the occasional Ferrari, which you are happy to let pass just to look at them, as well as the inievitable Alfas and Fiats.
We shot a couple of video clips that need editing…here’s the rough first one…as you can hear we are not even sure how to use the video function on our little camera..!
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2072 Granger Way
First we learned that we could do it. Then we discovered we had done it numerous times without intending to, now working on pulling stills from video clips that begin with an intended snapshot, then go on to keep filming my walking feet, or even the dark inside of the camera bag….Doh!
How about that movie! How did you do that? I have one of those cameras, but I don’t know how to deal with the pictures.
We will be glad to see you home. Tuscany sounds wonderful.