Market day in Tavarnelle

Tavarnelle is about 15 minutes north from Pastine where we stayed and is the last stop before the highway.  The first day we arrived, we bought our groceries in the Coop in Tavarnelle right after we got off the highway.   It's a town that we drove through many times during the week but which we never really stopped at to look.  We happened upon market day the day we were going to Greve in Chianti for lunch. 

Having been to only two Tuscan town markets, I've found them to be quite different from the ones in Provence that I visited.  They seemed to cater mainly to locals with clothing and shoes that looked like they were cheap imports rather than local made.  And many locals shopped in the markets, which, as in Provence, rotate throughout the week among the various towns.  Most of the merchandise were sold from trucks fitted to open up as stores.

Take a look at the photos below and compare them with the ones I took of markets in Provence: "Everyday is market day".  They are quite different in atmosphere and colour.

But we bought some really fresh fish, octopus and squid for dinner!

The barricaded street is usually the first indication there is a street market going on

Hello Kitty in Tuscany

Fresh vegetable plants - this is what I mean about these being for locals rather than tourists

Cheap clothing 

Wicker for the locals

Housewares

Shoes!

Lovely flowers

Catching up with the neighbours

Cheese from refrigerated trucks

Fish from refrigerated trucks!  And they were very fresh.  We waited for our number to be called as we watched him slice up the last piece of fish that we had our eyes on.  Still, when our turn came, we realize there were other fish in the fridge behind.

We had one of these for dinner...

"Polpo" (Octopus)

Nice baskets - but I'm curious why these are not coloured
The Tavernelle market was an interesting experience.  It is much smaller than the street market we visited the following day in Colle Val d'Elsa (see previous post) although they are quite similar.

This marks the end of my posts on the Tuscany countryside.  On to the big city next...

Getting lost in Colle Val d'Elsa

The only reason we visited Colle Val d'Elsa was because we wanted to try the two stars Michelin restaurant Arnolfo - and for a good part of the hour before the designated time, we thought we would never find the restaurant!

We spent the morning in the newer section of town attracted by the large street market. An hour before the appointed time, we started to head to Arnolfo's.  We managed to drive around in circles because the GPS kept directing us to cut through the streets barricaded by the market.  Other than crashing through the barriers, we couldn't figure out how to get to our destination.  I almost destroyed our rental car when I drove over a median (thank goodness it was a one way street) and for a half hour after that, was waiting for the engine to drop out of the car - good thing the Germans made cars specially built for this kind of driver.

No one in the Coop market have heard of the street Arnolfo was on - it was a little surreal, when you consider that it was just in the old town with the same name. We finally decided to drive out of the town and just use holistic navigation.  We saw an older town up a steep incline outside of the new town and decided to try our luck there.  Believe it or not, our instincts were right!    We found the restaurant easily on the main street, had a great lunch and even saw a part of the old town before we head home on our last day in the Tuscan countryside.  For photos of Arnolfo and the delicious lunch, please go to Foodsparks.

Market day and all the men stood around - one wondered what they were chatting about, if at all

Politics?

Food is more interesting

The old town is within view of the new town, incredible that people didn't seem to know the name of the main street in the old town...

The nice path up to the old town where there was very little parking

In the space of four hours - the length of our lunch, the farmer had almost finished ploughing his field of sunflowers across the ravine from Arnolfo 

This must be the first time that I saw a traffic light inside an old town

Nice shop front

A grocery store

An interesting contemporary art gallery

By the time we finished lunch, it was 5 o'clock - the streets were deserted.  Colle Val d'Elsa is actually quite big.   I think we only visited a small section of the town.  But it was our last day, we were all a little worn out and almost looking forward to leaving even though we had a great time.  

Radda in Chianti

What I love about Radda in Chianti is how quiet and peaceful it was when we visited in late afternoon. It is a hilltown, sitting high above the surrounding countryside with its vineyards and olive trees.  When we stood outside the city walls, we saw the essence of Chianti laid out before us.  It was enchanting.

The medieval town, inhabited since the 9th century, has its city walls and its nature intact.  It seemed unspoilt by tourism, with very few shops and the locals still hang out in the main piazza.  

At the top of the hill

Chianti at your feet...

Quiet streets 

Church of San Niccolo in the main square

Local children playing in front of the medieval fountain

The 15th century Palazzo del Podesta, house of the Florentine governor has a facade with coats of arms

An art gallery in a medieval cellar - what a great backdrop for an exhibit

Medieval bell tower 

A walk along the city wall - you can see the surrounding countryside from the top of the wall and also outside the walls

More Chianti! 

And for the first time in a week, we got home in time to watch the sunset!

Greve in Chianti

We left the Chianti towns till the last because they were closest to where we stayed and also have less historical landmarks to visit so we could do several in a day - or so we thought.  Greve in Chianti was our first stop but on the way there, we came across market day in Tavarnelle - an opportunity we couldn't miss.  I'll blog about the Tuscany markets in another post.

On the map, Greve in Chianti was only 25 km away and even if we were to go at 50 km an hour, it should theoretically only take us half an hour to get there.  Google suggested 45 minutes but in reality it must have taken us at least twice as long - and I could not explain it.  It's true these were country roads, narrow and windy and you took your life in your hands every time you turned a blind corner - but they were not impossible.  Bottomline we arrived for a very late lunch.

Our destination was the renowned historical butcher shop Antica Macelleria Falorni reputedly the oldest in Tuscany and still run by members of the same family since 1729.  The shop was awesome - one couldn't help but gawk at all the prosciutto hanging from the ceiling - and the many varieties offered.  Lunch turned out to be a picnic.  Read about this interesting experience on Foodsparks.

Greve itself was pretty, with the butcher shop the main focus of the town square and a church at the end of the square but we didn't see too much else in between.

Never seen so much ham in my life!

An amazing variety of meat - note for shoppers - don't even think about buying prosciutto to take home if you live in North America.  One member of our group got hers confiscated by U.S. customers - many euros down the drain...

The self-dispensing wine-tasting machine

  

The arcade outside Falorni's

Nice shops selling local merchandise - and a florist

The church at the end of the square

This sculpture outside the Chianti Classico building was very much an object of tourist gawking

The town square Piazza Giacomo Matteotti with its fine statue of explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, from the family of the same name that produced the Chianti Classico wine