Killing Batteries

Welcome back to Tuscany Month, featuring another chunk of the Lost Tuscany Text, some of my favorite content that didn’t make it into the totally redesigned 2010 Lonely Planet Tuscany & Umbria.

Today’s Lost Text is a box I wrote about Pope Pius II for the previous Tuscany & Umbria guidebook. Pius is easily one of the most interesting, successful, yet oddly narcissistic and peculiar popes in history. That we name-drop the guy in the guidebook about as often as St Catherine is evidence of the mark he made during his wildly prolific life.

Pius’ intangible contributions to society, both before and after being named pope, were immeasurable. The largest physical example of his impact on Europe can still be admired today in the form of Pienza’s Piazza Pio II. In an effort to jazz up his birthplace, Pius commissioned the total renovation of Pienza’s central square (done in a mere three years between 1459 and 1462), designed by architect Bernardo Rossellino. Urban planning geeks will particularly dig this square as it became the Renaissance blueprint later adopted in other towns and cities across Italy and eventually Europe.

Here’s the text:

The Notorious P-I-U-S

Let’s be honest, there’s been a lot of popes over time and not all of them have been newsworthy, or even pope-worthy for that matter. Pope Pius II (1405-1464) was both. Born Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the man was everywhere. He was a tireless traveller, writer of erotic and comic stories, poet laureate, diplomat, bishop, exhaustive autobiographer (13 volumes!) and medieval urban-planning trend-setter. And most of that occurred before he was even pope! His early ‘faults’ in life being no secret, that he redressed his motivations and developed into such a distinguished and likeable leader is particularly estimable. Noted above all for being ‘human’, an elusive papacy trait apparently, he’s also remembered for his tireless diplomacy, even in the face of uncooperative leaders and insurmountable odds.

Tuscany Month continues with my on-the-ground, personally researched list of the best cheap sleeps in Tuscany. The Sleeping listings were one of the hardest hit sections in the beautifully crafted 2010 edition of Lonely Planet Tuscany & Umbria and with online accommodation booking making this section almost obsolete, it’s easy to understand why.

I realize that Tuscany is not one of the first places in the world that springs to mind when you think of budget travel. And honestly, assuming one doesn’t commit to campsites and bread and jam three meals a day, even utilizing my best Tuscany budget travel tips will still result in a somewhat serious cash outlay over a week or two compared to a similar interval in Bulgaria. Furthermore, one would be tempted, and sometimes correct, in assuming that anyone offering super-budget accommodations in high-priced Tuscany is probably renting out rooms in an abandoned wing of a mental hospital 12 kilometers outside of town.

Well, the good news is that there’s several passably cheap sleeps in Tuscany. Staying at a few of them will require you to have you own car, or heroic public bus patience and fortitude, but many are within easy walking distance from some of Tuscany’s best areas. Two caveats: I have not accounted for Florence and northwest Tuscany in this list, as this is not my research area, and I am not taking into account the sprinkling of semi-decent campsites in the region. I’m only including places with four permanent walls, proper beds and indoor plumbing. Also, prices listed were accurate as of spring/summer 2009.

There are, of course, a few HI hostels in the area. Though, as Italy backpacker veterans will probably agree, Italy’s HI hostels are, for the most part, well below the bar for European standards of cleanliness and location, to say nothing of the tendency for prison-caliber rules and the occasionally questionable mental stability of the proprietors. Unfortunately, unless you consider yourself among the greatest of all hostel warriors, for these reasons I cannot recommend the HI hostels in Livorno, Siena and Cortona.

Having said all that, in no particular order, the best cheap sleeps in Tuscany are:

Pensione Dante (Livorno)
Singles €30, doubles €40, triples €50 (breakfast included)
This is a great, centrally located place. New management brought in new floors, new beds, and vastly improved bathrooms and communal kitchen. Rooms are large and bare, some with a view of the canal, but everything is squeaky clean. The new breakfast room opens up to the canal as well and has a TV and coffee machine. When I last visited, though it’s not yet mentioned on their web site, they were preparing to open a B&B nearby.

Pensione Bartoli (Castiglioncello)
Singles €43-50, doubles €60-72 (closed November-Easter)
Located in the unpretentious (read, somewhat boring and strangely starved of decent eating options) seaside town of Castiglioncello, this villa is rich in character and offers unbeatable value. It’s an old-fashioned ‘let’s stay with grandma’ kind of place with 18 well-dusted, large rooms, lace curtains and venerable family furniture. Rooms 19 (the largest) and 21 have the best sea views.

Albergo Ape Elbana (Portoferraio, Isola d’Elba)
Singles €45-80, doubles €60-110 (including breakfast and parking)
Sitting enviably in the center of Portoferraio’s old town, overlooking Piazza della Repubblica (where guests can park for free). This butter-colored building is Elba’s oldest hotel, where guests of Napoleon are reputed to have stayed while he was briefly exiled on this pretty island. The location is its best feature as rooms, while large, are a little soulless. Ask for one of the larger ones looking onto the piazza.

Hotel La Perla (Siena)
Singles €40-60, doubles €70-85, triples €90-115 (no breakfast)
A very friendly and well-run budget option, considering its dead center location in one of Tuscany’s more pricey cities. Bathrooms are small and a few rooms are musty, but that’s a small price to pay for this otherwise excellent value, seconds from Piazza del Campo. Room 28 has an amazing view of San Domenico church and Room 26 overlooks the Duomo.

Hotel Le Tre Donzelle (Siena)
Singles with shared bathroom €38, doubles with shared bathroom €49, doubles with private bathroom €60
Central and popular, this hotel was originally constructed as a tavern in the 13th century. Rooms are clean and simple and the shared bathrooms are spotless. Ask for a room facing away from the noisy street.

Foresteria Monastero di San Girolamo (San Gimignano)
Per person €27 (Breakfast is €3, parking is available)
Run by friendly Benedictine nuns, this is an excellent quiet, budget choice in otherwise super expensive San Gimignano, with basic but spacious, comfortable rooms with attached bathrooms, sleeping two to five people. It’s a busy place, often hosting groups, so ring as far ahead as possible. If you don’t have a reservation, arrive between 9am and 12.30pm or between 3pm and 5.45pm and ring the monastery bell. You can also use their kitchen (€3 per day).

Il Giardino (Montalcino)
Tel. +39 (0) 577-84-82-57, email albergoilgiardino at virgilio dot it
Singles €40-45, doubles €55-60, triples €73-85 (including breakfast)
An excellent-value, family-run, friendly, two-star hotel overlooking Piazza Cavour. The pensioners running it don’t speak a lick of English, so have your phrasebook at the ready.

Le Case (Castiglione d’Orcia)
Singles €45, doubles €70, triples €85 (including breakfast, free internet access and wi-fi, closed Jan-mid-Mar)
The only agriturismo on the list and, in fact, probably the best value agriturismo in Tuscany. Just 1km south of Castiglione d’Orcia, this 18th-century stone farmhouse is run by a warm Italian couple. All five rooms are tastefully decorated and charming in their simplicity. Two elderly farmers can be regularly spotted around the property, resolutely continuing their daily chores. Somewhat remote (you definitely need your own car to stay here) and fittingly peaceful, nearby diversions include horseback riding, hiking, wine-tasting, and the spas. Discounts available for long stays.

Oliviera Camere (Pienza)
Singles €35, doubles €48 (both include breakfast); apartments (without breakfast) €70
Once an olive oil mill and squeezed into a side street in low-key, pedestrian-friendly Pienza, this place represents excellent value. Its four rooms are simple, but fresh and attractive. There are also three larger studio apartments. It’s great as a base of operations, as several buses a day pass through Pienza heading for both Siena and Montepulciano.

Bellavista (Montepulciano)
Tel. +39 (0) 347 823 23 14; email bellavista at bccmp dot com
Doubles €65-70 (Parking available)
This is an excellent choice if you’re traveling in pairs. Nearly all of its 10 high-ceiling, double rooms have fantastic views – room 6 has a private terrace. Some rooms have refrigerators and all have great beds. No-one lives here so phone ahead in order to be met and given a key (if you’ve omitted this stage, there’s a phone in the entrance lobby from where you can call).

La Cocciara (Cetona)
Per person €20
Horribly located in ho-hum Cetona (you’ll need a car to stay here), but it’s one of the precious few HI-affiliated youth hostels in Tuscany that won’t offend. Large, clean, safe and friendly. Bring earplugs, as noise from the busy road can be formidable.

Seminario di Sant’Andrea (Volterra)
Tel +39 (0) 588 8 60 28; email semvescovile at diocesivolterra dot it
Single with bathroom €14, double with bathroom €28; doubles with shared bathroom €36 (Breakfast is €3, parking available)
Still an active church retreat (but they welcome all comers), this is a peaceful, though slightly dilapidated place with vaulted ceilings and 20 large, clean rooms. A mere 600m or so from Piazza dei Priori.

View from room 6 in Albergo Guastini

Albergo Guastini (Pitigliano)
Singles €35-40, doubles €58-66, triples €84-92 (Breakfast is a steep €8; closed mid-Jan-mid-Feb)
This is Pitigliano’s only hotel, so it’s a good thing they’re friendly and welcoming. The main attraction here is that the hotel is perched on the edge of the cliff face, giving amazing view of the bastion (rooms 6 and 18 in particular). These are among the best hotel-room vistas in Tuscany. Its highly regarded restaurant (meals with a glass of wine, cost about €28) also merits a visit.

Camera Caffe (Arezzo)
Singles without bathroom €35; Singles with bathroom €40, doubles with bathroom €55 (breakfast included)
Across the street from Arezzo’s train station and reasonable walking distance from anything in the historic center, the dorm room decor here is supplemented by cushy beds and fat duvets. The huge, self-serve kitchen has a gorgeous dining terrace with city views. Some rooms have air-con.

Betania (Cortona)
Singles without bathroom €32, doubles without bathroom €42; doubles with bathroom €48
Just outside Cortona’s historic center, at the end of a gated, beautiful, tree-lined entrance, the large garden, great views and onsite church give the property a distinct monastic feel. They offer off-street parking for €25 per day, but the street parking is just fine.

La Casa sul Lago (Torricella, outside Perugia)
Dorm bed €16, private rooms €22-44 per person
I gave these guys the Killing Batteries bump in 2007 for Best Hostel, even though they are located just a few kilometers outside my region, in the tiny village of Torricella, only 50 meters from the shores of Lake Trasimeno in Umbria (where I lived for a few months). It’s a large place, that frequently hosts school groups in the summer (book in advance!), but the people running it are just awesome. The location is slightly inconvenient if you don’t have a car (the village has a train station on the Perugia-Florence line, but trains only stop a few times a day), but the lake-side village is super chill. They have a second location on Polvese Island that’s so beautiful and agriturismo-licious that people have been known to become giddy with pleasure during their stay and (almost) propose marriage to whatever female is in their company.

Ostello San Frediano (Lucca)
Dorm bed €18-20; double with private bathroom €55
OK, this one is outside my research territory too, but I stayed here for a few nights at the end of my trip in 2009 and they are just great. In fact, they’re outstanding by Italian HI Hostel standards. Inside the historic center, free parking, €8 dinners available, and housed in a massive, historic building.

Welcome to the first of many Tuscany posts in the month of January, marking the release of a heartbreaking work of guidebooking genius, the 2010 edition of Lonely Planet Tuscany & Umbria.

I don’t normally make such a big deal about the release of my guidebooks, but this particular guidebook is special, because, what with the lavish redesign, it’s effectively a first edition. Everyone busted their respective asses molding the old content into a gutsy new style, which is only being applied to select LP titles. There’s lots of changes: new maps, easier to navigate layout and better organized practical information, among other things.

The downside was that a scat-load of words had to be sacrificed to make this game-changing redesign. This text reduction was made possible by listing fewer eating and accommodation options, shortening site descriptions and, in some cases, tragically chopping out whole towns. As I’ve repeatedly made clear in the past, guidebook research, even in Tuscany, can be a ball-busting drag some days. But having to go home after all that pavement pounding and slash vast portions of text that literally took days to research drove me to weeping, desk-pounding, expletive-hollering despair on more than a few occasions. (My office can be a very dramatic place, as you might have gathered)

Well, it’s time to take those lemons and make limoncello. Amongst the sneak previews, my own Top 11 lists and extended tips and reviews that I’ll be posting this month, I’ll also be re-purposing (as we like to say in publishing circles) much of the Tuscany content lost to my reduced word count limits. Armed with the new edition and the grenades of info, tips and quips that I’ll be listing here, when you go to Tuscany you’ll be the envy of, well, me for starters. Boy, do I miss that food.

The first installment of the Lost Tuscany Text, is a box text about St Catherine of Siena, an A-List saint if there ever was one. Some of you Killing Batteries old timers may recognize chucks of this text, because I posted a longer, less informative, but far more hilarious version of the piece two years ago, entitled “Good for nothing kid or future saint?”. Sadly, this enlightening and wit-soaked box, which I wrote specifically for the previous edition of Tuscany & Umbria, did not survive the editor’s ‘delete’ button for the new edition, so I’m posting it here in its entirety:

‘Mom! Catherine’s Consecrating Her Virginity to Jesus Again!!’

Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), co-patron saint of Italy and one of only two female Doctors of the Church, was born in Siena, the 23rd child out of 25 (her twin sister died at birth). Like a true prodigy, she had a religious fixation at a very early age. She is said to have entertained plans to impersonate a man so she could be a Dominican friar and occasionally raced out to the road to kiss the place where Dominicans had walked.

At the dubious age of seven, she consecrated her virginity to Christ, much to her family’s despair. At 18 she assumed the life of a Dominican Tertiary (lay-affiliate) and, as wayward teens are wont to do, chose initially to live as a recluse in the family’s basement, focused on devotion and spiritual ecstasy. She was noted for her ability to fast for extended periods, living only on the Blessed Sacrament, which as nutritionists might attest, probably contributed to a delirium or two. Catherine described one such episode as a ‘mystical marriage’ with Jesus. Feeling a surge of humanity (or possibly boredom), she emerged from her cloistered path and began caring for the sick and poor.

Another series of visions set in Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, compelled Catherine to take her work to the next level. Though it’s said she didn’t actually learn to write until near the end of her life, she began an ambitious and fearless letter-writing campaign – dictating up to three letters to three secretaries simultaneously – to all variety of influential people, including lengthy correspondence with Pope Gregory XI. She beseeched royalty and religious leaders for everything from peace between Italy’s republics to reform within the clergy. This go-getter, early form of activism was considered highly unusual for a woman at the time and her no-holds-barred style, sometimes scolding cardinals and queens like naughty children, was gutsy by any standard. And yet, rather than being persecuted for her insolence, she was admired, her powers of persuasion often winning the day where so many others had failed.

She is said to have experienced the stigmata, but this event was suppressed as it was considered bad form at the time to associate the stigmata with anyone but St Francis.

Acting as an ambassador to Florence, she went to Avignon and was able to convince Pope Gregory XI to bring the papacy back to Rome after a seven-pope, 73-year reign in France. A few years later she was invited to Rome by newly elected Pope Urban VI to campaign on his behalf during the Pope/anti-pope struggle (the ‘great western Schism’) where she did her best to undo the effects that his temper and shortcomings were having on Rome. This heroic, utterly exhausting effort likely contributed to her untimely death in 1380 at the age of 33.

Catherine’s abundant postmortem accolades started relatively soon after her death when Pope Pius II canonized her in 1461. More recently, Pope Paul VI bestowed Catherine with the title of Doctor of the Church in 1970 and Pope John Paul II made her one of Europe’s patron saints in 1999. Additionally, despite having received no formal education, her letters (over 300 have survived) are considered to be great works of Tuscan literature.

It’s finally done. I know this is incredibly delayed (I finished my Tuscany research trip over a month ago), but I felt I needed to review and carefully consider my notes before posting this authoritative, yet decidedly subjective list.

Caveats: Of course there are caveats. Chiefly, I’m not taking into consideration all of Tuscany in this list. My territory of research for LP is Central, the Coast (including Isola d’Elba), Eastern and Southern Tuscany. In other words, not Florence and not Northwest Tuscany (Lucca, Pisa, etc).

Also, although I’ve now done guidebook research in this territory twice and can cautiously declare myself an expert, I am merely one man – one exceptionally gifted, insightful, smokin’ hot, dignified, semi-sober man – and Tuscany is a densely packed region of almost limitless awesomeness. By my estimation, there are about 3,475 notable scenic drives, 374,622 agriturismi, 1,273,938,294 restaurants (roughly) and so on. Obviously I did not drive/visit/eat at every one of these options. Relying on experience, meetings with tourism reps, reader letters, conversations with local characters, etc, I endeavored to review some of the best options that time, the elements and word count limits would allow. So if you don’t see your favorite whatever here, it’s not because I’m an incompetent halfwit that didn’t actually visit Tuscany before doing the write-up. This is all too frequently the conclusion that people authoring hate mail to me jump to when I don’t mention the amazing, third generation, mom and pop trattoria they presumptuously “discovered”, like it was an archeological find from 1000 BC. By the way, they’re almost all third generation, mom and pop trattorie, people.

What I’m getting at is that it’s likely I didn’t get to review the absolute best of everything. That’s just how this job goes. Maybe if there were six of me (which would be spectacular, even without Tuscany) and each of us had three months on the road, perhaps this would be viable, but unfortunately that is not the case. I hope I have not destroyed your other-worldly, mystical fantasy of how guidebooks are made.

Now that I’ve excused myself from all fault, here are my “Best/Worst of Tuscany” and “What Happened?” lists for 2009.

Best/Worst of Tuscany

•    Best drive: This is a tough one to nail down. Incredible driving scenery in Tuscany is more profuse than douchebags at a Brewer’s game. In Central Tuscany the stretch between Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore and Asciano is by far the one where I wished I was the passenger in the car and not the driver. In Southern Tuscany, the bit between Albinia and Magliano in Toscana gets awfully pretty for the last 10 km. On the Coast, the back road connecting Sassetta and Suvereto is hailed by a local cycling journalist as being one of the best in all of Italy for biking and motorcycling, to which I agree whole-heartedly.
•    Worst drive: Anywhere within the Livorno city limits.
•    Best parking: Cortona. Close to the historic city center and free.
•    Worst parking: It’s a tie between Livorno and Arezzo.
•    Best view from a hotel room: I’m giving it to the same place as last time, the Albergo Guastini in Pitigliano. Specifically, rooms six and 18, among others. There’s just no equal. Pitigliano is also far and away the winner of the ‘Coolest looking hill town from a distance’ award, if you’re interested.
•    Best Hostel: Sadly, the best hostel in my territory is in one of the least noteworthy areas. I’m talking La Cocciara in tiny, ho-hum Cetona. The hostel is large, clean, safe, friendly and has great beds, but apart from some fine dining in town and the inviting climb on Monte Cetona, there’s really not much to keep you in the area.
•    Best hotel room (budget): Santa Margherita in Cortona. Run by sweet, obliging nuns and just completed a total renovation, including new beds, fresh paint, and sparkling bathrooms. Honorable mention goes to Pensione Weekend in Porto Santo Stefano, on the Monte Argentario peninsula.
•    Best hotel room (mid-range): Antica Residenza Cicogna in Siena. Springless beds, soundproof windows, ornate frescoes, free wi-fi, antique furniture, huge buffet breakfast and a great location. What’s not to love?
•    Best hotel room (high-end): La Frateria di Padre Eligio, also near ho-hum Cetona. (Am I missing something here? Is there a major attraction nearby that I somehow drove past while grappling with the GPS?) It’s a gorgeous former convent dating from 1212, lovingly restored and converted into an unforgettable seven-room hotel and gourmet restaurant.
•    Worst hotel room: Unlike in 2007, I managed to get through the entire trip without being the victim of bedbugs. I stayed in some shabby places, but none of them were flat-out awful. So, instead of naming the worst room, I’ll name the worst service, which was hands-down the disastrously pretentious Hotel Vogue in Arezzo. I didn’t stay there, but my time in reception was probably the most frustrating, customer service-starved 10 minutes of the entire trip. They started out cagy and difficult and then, even after I relented and identified myself, they refused to give me prices, refused to let me see a room and refused to smile (or look away from his computer screen in one clerk’s case). Kiss all your Lonely Planet business goodbye!
•    Worst city for overall accommodations: Though there’s a new, promising budget contender that has yet to prove themselves, overall, Livorno has the worst price-to-value accommodation options in Tuscany. This is unfortunate, as they don’t exactly have the strongest visitor appeal, unless eating at endless exceptional seafood restaurants is enough to snare long-stay visitors. I imagine their biggest tourism hotel customer base are those people arriving late or departing early on ferries, so we’re talking one overnight max, whereas if they lowered prices a bit, people might be inclined to stay longer, giving them more money and less work turning over the rooms. Capice?
•    Best wine: Once again, Vernaccia di San Gimignano. Though I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t mention the incredible, relatively discounted prices one can get if they shop carefully in Montalcino for very decent bottles of the coveted Burnello.
•    Most over-rated wine: It was amazing, don’t get me wrong, but I’d have a hard time finding the money to regularly indulge in the Super Tuscan Sassicaia, made in Bolgheri, for €20 per 10cc pour.
•    Best plate of pasta: This is how unfair the universe is: the best plate of pasta I saw in Tuscany was not consumed by me, but by my companion! I got a small taste and that was it! For the record it was the buckwheat lasagna au gratin with pheasant and fennel seeds on a base of creamed garlic and squash. Anyone whose saliva glands aren’t running at full power right now should see a doctor, because it was cra-zay. This complex miracle of gastronomic wizardry was served at Antica Osteria da Divo in Siena. I’ve gotta give two honorable mentions (that I actually ate): the first was the Spinach ravioli with walnut and radicchio sauce, served at Ristorante Don Beta in Volterra. The other was the Chianina beef and tarragon ravioli with porcini mushrooms and cherry tomatoes, a tiny but nonetheless amazing dish I had at Sobborgo in Cetona (there’s that town again).
•    Best meal: Price being no object (without resorting to Michelin Star restaurants), I’m giving this one to Ristorante Don Beta in Volterra. I ate there twice and although the service on the second visit was wooden at best, the food standard was with either superior or beyond both times. Also, as my companion pointed out, the place was full of locals, which you don’t often find at higher end restaurants in tourist towns.
•    Best budget meal: This one was easy, Cantina Senese in Livorno. Excellent seafood at prices dock workers will pay.
•    Worst meal: I have to be careful here. Last time I called out the place that food poisoned me, the owner went nuts and emailed me repeatedly. Instead, I’ll just say how disappointed I was that the formerly great and relatively affordable restaurants that sit on the northeast edge of Piazza Grande in Arezzo have started to charge 10-15% service charges on top of the coperto, which is just unnecessarily greedy and opportunistic. They still have wonderful meals, but staring at not one, but two compulsory tips on the bill irritates a special place in my soul.
•    Best gelato: Gelateria di Piazza in San Gimignano, who I named in 2007, is still doing great work, but I was very impressed with newcomer Visola del Gusto in Volterra, whose signature flavor redefines the word ‘creamy’.
•    Best town: I’m still a die-hard Cortona fan. As I said in 2007, I like the funky streets, cinematic houses and the fact they manage to maintain eateries serving great food at decent prices. This year they were even better, with some major improvements in the budget accommodation options (see ‘Best hotel room [budget]‘ above). However in the interest of fairness, I’m going to give the bump to Portoferraio, on the island of Elba. It’s got fun streets, interesting Napoleonic history and too many good restaurants to fit into the space that I was allotted to write about them in the book. Just avoid it in June/July/August or you’ll have difficulty enjoying most if not all of these perks. Also, the accommodation situation could use improvement. Entrepreneurs, get going.
•    Best big city: As in 2007, it’s Siena. There’s nothing like it.
•    Best beach: Passable beaches are on the coast, like just south of Livorno or the less objectionable profiteering beach towns like Castiglioncello, but the island of Elba still takes honors. If you don’t like rubbing oiled-up elbows with strangers, head for the southeast corner of the island. There’s a bunch of places that take a little effort to reach, meaning they’re pretty roomy, even in high season.
•    Best monastery: Again this is a toughie, but I found myself more impressed this time around by Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore near Asciano. The fresco cycles by Luca Signorelli and Il Sodoma are just amazing.
•    Best agriturismo: In 2007 my bump went to Agriturismo San Lorenzo, just 2km outside of Volterra, which I still love with the heat of a thousand espressos.  However, I was introduced to a new winner this year that takes the title, La Cerreta, outside of Sassetta. They’ve been at it for over 20 years, engineering a ‘self-sufficient, biodynamic, harmonic project’, a mindset and lifestyle that will cause all but the most die-hard city lover to re-think their lives. They aim for a simple, gastronomically authentic Tuscan lifestyle. They raise cinta senese (indigenous Tuscan pig), Maremma cows, and the rare Livornese chicken, among others and welcome WWOOFers for short and long-term stays. When I visited they were close to finishing their brand new, three-pool spa, using a thermal spring that they’d discovered late last year.

What Happened?

•    Number of days on the road: 31
•    Number of genuine rest days in that time: 2
•    Drove about 2,200 kilometers (about 1,367 miles)
•    Percentage of time while driving that I was being tailgated by a deranged Italian, under the impression that he was racing for pole position:  50%
•    Most dangerous passing: a van three times the size of my car rode my ass on a violently twisty mountain rode for about 10 minutes – I was already going fast enough to scatter books and papers and test the traction and suspension on my Panda – then finally passed me on a 150 meter stretch between blind curves and careened out of sight. Asshat.
•    Average temperature: 60 degrees  Fahrenheit (15.6 Celsius)
•    Number of days that I could walk around without a jacket or umbrella: 2
•    Number of times I did laundry in 30 days:  1 and 1/2
•    Number of towns visited:  65, (not counting all the little resort-towns, rural abbeys, parks, random castles, and bumps in the road that required me to pull over to check a fact)
•    Number of cumulative hours spent lost:  five (huge improvement over the ’1.8 billion squillion hours’ I spent lost in 2007)
•    Number of times I cursed lazy/confusing/nonexistent Italian signage at lunatic volume until I became horse: three
•    Number of times that my GPS crashed, ran out of power, got confused by dense cities, took me on unnecessary detours or otherwise failed me: 18 (still, in addition to my familiarity with the region, it’s what most saved me from being constantly lost on this trip)
•    Number of times I parked illegally:  countless
•    Number of parking tickets:  zero
•    Number of free wi-fi clouds that I found:  22 (much improved this year, mainly because I was armed with my awesome Blackberry, allowing me to pirate wi-fi while loitering in front of random hotels, cafes and doorsteps, though searching these out still took a lot of energy, as most hubs were  password protected)
•    Number of cups of coffee consumed: 257 (I tried to show a little restraint this year, 2007 got a little out of control)
•    Number of people who told me that I had their dream job:  31
•    Number of times that people who only talked to me for 15 minutes in 2007 unsettlingly recognized me as soon as I walked in the door: 14
•    Number of reverent, nubile, females whose hearts I broke with my good looks, coveted job and fleeting, dashing presence: zero
•    Number of reverent, nubile, males whose hearts I broke with my good looks, coveted job and fleeting, dashing presence: three
•    Number of people who charitably told me “No, no! Your Italian is just fine!”: one
•    Number of mornings I woke up and said “OK, no wine with dinner tonight. This has gotta stop. I’m dying here.” then had wine with dinner: seven

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

Using my very limited skills and resources, I have slapped together a montage of photos from my recently completed Lonely Planet Tuscany research trip. As a general nod to posterity (and those considering my internship offer), I’ve chosen to irresponsibly romanticize the trip by leaving out pictures of me limping, being lost, rained on and falling asleep at dinner between the primo and secondo. Enjoy.

[If your blog reader does not display the video, please click here]

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

… when everyone in town knows you’re gonna drink it alone.

By this stage, it’s no secret that I habitually enjoy a few glasses of wine (in front of me, simultaneously, as I dutifully finish the bottle) while in the privacy of my home after a long day of writing and the sadistic four foot commute from my desk to my couch. This regular wine consumption is one of those charming, some say ‘fruity’, habits that I brought home after living in Europe for almost four years, in addition to refusing to ever own a car again, coffee addiction and pronouncing words that are new to me using Latin vowel rules which is never right in English and just makes me sound pompous. I still cant seem to say ‘Conde Nast’ right.

When I buy wine at home, it is done with delightful anonymity at a wine/liquor store just a few blocks from my condo in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. Though they are ever attentive and kind, even after a year of my frequent custom and well over a $1,000 in wine and Strongbow purchases, there’s nary a wee hint of familiarity when I heave my items onto the checkout counter. I love this, because that means there’s no probing chit-chat about the special occasion that calls for yet another case of Strongbow, only six days since I was last seen hauling a case out the door or how much my extended family must have loved those sale-priced Chiantis, when I return only days later to once again to buy as much as I can comfortably carry.

I’m not overly concerned with appearances, as even a quick glance into my closet will confirm, but I found myself more than a little self-conscious on the morning of my departure from Montalcino, when I resolved to buy some can’t-say-no bargain Brunello di Montalcino in the main piazza. Drawing on my years of method actor training, I have resolutely assumed the quiet, rumpled dignity and unrelenting focus required of my guidebook writer persona – a ‘get a load of Rainman’ like manner that excuses me from acknowledging any trace of social embarrassment as I walk-trot from place to place with my Palm Pilot in one hand and my GPS-ready cell phone in the other amongst relaxing locals and vacationers. But I was feeling exceedingly self-conscious on this morning, after having been introduced to the whole of Montalcino the previous evening and they were all fully aware that I was quite alone and charged with writing detailed, accurate and, ideally, sober travel information about their town.

I’d taken drinks and dinner that night with Jena, an American expat and Montalcino resident of eight years, who I made mildly famous when I featured her as a ‘Local Voice’ in the current edition of Lonely Planet Tuscany & Umbria. Jena is, as we like to say in travel writing, a character. Lovely, warm, loud, passionate. She has taken on (or has always had, I can’t say for sure) all the stereotypical characteristics of a strong Italian woman – with a hair-raising zap of her own already robust enthusiasm. She is without a doubt a leading Montalcino personality. In a scorching two hours of rapid-fire banter, sometimes carrying on three concurrent conversations, we encountered and mingled with virtually all of Montalcino, who, in turn, met me and learned of my noble duty to report on all that is great in Tuscany.

The next day, I felt the eyes of the town on the back of my neck as I completed my research and, not wanting to pass up the cheapest Brunello prices in the world, decided that I would take away a bottle of liquid memories on my way to the car. Strangely, the overwhelmingly wine-focus Italians view drinking alone, even in moderation, as being somewhat eccentric. Even the dedicated winos do their drinking at their local café, where despite it just being them and the barista at 9:30 in the morning, they are nevertheless drinking in a social situation, so they’re exonerated. Knowing this, I was keenly aware of the implications and interpretations of marching through town, carrying a Brunello that all in attendance knew that I would drink single-handedly in a distant hotel room in the very near future.

A collective hush descend on four busy café terraces in the square as I entered the shop. I quickly made my purchase and hustled out the door carrying my bottle in a conspicuously large, cardboard carrying case that the cashier insisted on giving me, rather than permitting my carefully laid plan to shove it up my pant leg. Eyebrows on some 87 people arched, while they tracked my retreat down Montalcino’s main street. The usual smattering of little old ladies leaning out their windows, monitoring street goings on while their laundry dries, was unusually abundant as I made for the car, their expressionless faces slowly turning, staying fixed on me as I passed, judging, tutting, condemning.

I picked up the pace once I was in the parking lot on the edge of town, leaping and sliding across the hood of my car Dukes of Hazard style (which ain’t easy on the snub-nosed Fiat Panda), clamored into the driver’s seat and roared down the hill (which also ain’t easy in a Panda), taking a 15 kilometer detour around the city, rather than driving back through the center.

Years from now, they’ll still talking about the devilishly handsome, lonely, gringo that blew through town one day in 2009. Despite being a sad, closet drinker, his guidebook jottings saved everyone from financial ruin and indentured servitude to the evil mega-ranch owner, not to mention the 20 minute running gun fight with the rancher’s henchmen, where 4,246 rounds were fired from automatic weapons and all the henchmen were disarmed and captured without a single person getting shot. And then, like a one-man A-Team, he was suddenly gone.

Despite these heroics, I’ll have to decline the LP Tuscany job in 2011, since I can never set foot in Montalcino again, what with their long memories and legendary café gossip, repeating the tales of my alcoholism like historical legend, passed down orally from generation to generation as was the custom before there was mobile phone text messaging.

And yes, I opened that Brunello the very same evening, an exquisite, palette-humping 2004 (14% alcohol volume!), that cost a mere 18 euros or about US$24. Per the careful instructions I received in the shop, I opened it and waited for two of the longest hours of my life while it ‘breathed’ or ‘wheezed’ or whatever, then, after showering and putting on my best underwear, we climbed into bed together and made the kind of sweet love that only a man and a good bottle of wine can make. Well, if you wanna split hairs, I suppose there’s a second kind…

[PHOTO CREDIT: Katie Mardis]

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

Way back in February, I taped a few destination pieces for Lonely Planet TV while I was their guest in San Francisco. The Tuscany video went online today. (If, like me, your blog reader doesn’t show the embedded video, click here.)

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

For those of you that weren’t waiting in line at midnight, Lonely Planet’s latest edition of Tuscany & Umbria hit the shelves recently and through the magic of sub-standard mail delivery I just got my hands on my free author copies a few days ago.

That’s right, author copies. Why? Because I helped write that bitch, that’s why. Pages 213 through 308 to be exact.

As I’ve confessed here repeatedly, my being thrust into the brass ring of guidebook writing jobs was the direct result of an untimely bacterial lung infection (not mine) and using up about a decade of banked karma by conveniently being in Italy and doing nothing particularly important at the time. Seeing as how I was a sub and the regular (infected) author’s text was in such great shape, I hesitated to alter too much, but vast quantities of coffee during that panicky write-up interval and my uncontainable goofball humor repeatedly got the best of me.

Some of my more notable zings that somehow made it through editing include:

• Used the phrase “stupid Florence” (p237, 2nd column, last paragraph)
• Compared the rough port city of Livorno to a grade school girl bully (p213)
• Used the phrase “screw-the-Pope” (p295, 2nd column, 2nd paragraph)
• Slipped in a sarcasm-rich box text about Saint Catherine of Siena, entitled “Mom! Catherine’s Consecrating Her Virginity to Jesus Again!!” (p245) that eventually inspired the post “Good for nothing kid or future saint?”

Also, I must say that I hit the Eating sections hard. I heroically managed to dine in nearly 70 Tuscan restaurants during my 31 days on the road for this guidebook. There were times that I reeked so much of truffle oil that dogs came running out of the hills and gave chase as I drove by. I spent over 150 euros on gelato alone. I drank enough wine to earn a lifetime membership in the Pope Paul III Wine Appreciation Club.

I’ve had precious little free time to do more than skim my chapters and admire the “smoochy” picture of me in the front “On The Road” color section, but I know for a fact that my co-authors are all geniuses, so their sections are probably at least as good, if not better than mine – minus copious snarky comments about popes and Florence.

There’s already been a flood of positive reviews about the book online. Here are a few quotes:

“This guidebook changed my life. I’ve arranged to be legally wed to it.” – Leif Pettersen, Amazon.com

“I don’t know what’s better, this guidebook or porn.” – User “love_of_your_leif”, Travelers That Love Porn Dot Com

“This guidebook is what you would get if you took DNA from Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson and Michelle Hunziker, put it all in an incubator with 452 blank pages for nine months, then fed it with Diablo Cody’s breast milk.” – Genetics Society of America Book Review

In closing, having taken all factors under careful, impartial consideration, I declare that this is the greatest guidebook in the history of the universe. Twelve out of five stars, plus the KB Seal of Pure Genius Awesomeness™. Get it now before the first printing sells out and you can only get copies on eBay for $2,000, sold by some company calling itself Leiftime Book Brokers.

Have you ever noticed how there’s just too damn many saints, popes, royalty and leaders for any person with a reasonable social life to keep track of? I’m even fuzzy about the ones that are still alive, much less the untold hundreds of dead ones that people with a good inner-city education should have at least heard of. Did you know that Attila the Hun was from Hungary? Why did I think Mongolia?

Italy has no shortage of important people that I should at least have passing knowledge about and that’s creating a lot of extra work for me while I expand coverage for the LP book. It seems to me that someone should arrange of all the important people in history and present them all in one neat, chronological list. I realize that this might be more popularly known as ‘a history book’, but that’s not what I’m getting at. Just the really important people, done in a clear timeline, with cross references to other important people they interacted with. The current method of deluging us with information about every idiot that ever wore a crown, fed to us over the course of 18 years of schooling, is not sticking. And no, I will not be the one to compile that list. That’s a Bill Bryson job if I ever heard one. I know my strengths… If it isn’t about traveling or writing or complaining about something or cheap, yummy wine and coffee, I don’t want anything to do with it.

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As promised, my “Best/Worst of Tuscany” and “What Happened?” lists.

Best/Worst of Tuscany

• Best drive: People, it’s all good, assuming you’re in the passenger seat. If not, count on pulling over a lot for photo sessions. No need to signal, just stomp on the brakes. The 12 Italians tailgating you will understand.
• Worst drive: Trying to get anywhere but Rome when leaving Siena (honorable mention, any drive within the Livorno city limits)
• Best view from a hotel room: Hands down, the Albergo Guastini in Pitigliano

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