Fortunate enough to be doing a small job for a friend, I wrestled my way off the Autostrade (Italian for 'Get out of my way motorway') into the delightful backroads of Tuscany. I have been here before, but it was a while back, and faded somewhat from my memory... but as I sat eating breakfast at a stereotypical Tuscan B&B, it all came flooding back. The soft morning breeze moves the leaves on tall trees, like a thousand hands waving back at me across an empty field once filled with a flourishing Summer crop. I drive past old cottages, stone walls, and down lanes lined with cypress trees standing to order as if greeting me on my journey... and now a few days in the medieval village of Metato, perched high on the side of a mountain overlooking Camaiore and the Mediterranean sea. The houses and villas here are but only a handful, still though interlaced together like a puzzle gone wrong, creating meandering stone pathways and little arched entrances to multiple doorways. Too cramped to be relaxing... maybe, but here is the thing - you don't actually look into another window, and at night there is just pure peace, like you are the only one in the village. The wine is local... very good and very cheap. The pasta is home made by the neighbour literally 5 steps down the path, and you can go for a stroll through olive trees growing on what seems to be an impossibly steep farm. If you get bored with this, pop in to the local town in the valley, where you are flooded with choice of very good and original Italian cuisine - not like how the French do it ;)
So what is the catch?... well, if you ask any local about actually living here, the first things to voice are about the Italian economy almost beyond rescue or the corrupt Government, and fuel prices are even higher than Sweden (which is high). But if you bury yourself deep enough into a silky smooth panna cotta, it doesn't really matter :P Tuscany is a real slice of heaven.
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