A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
They had met and married on perilously short acquaintance, she an American chef and food writer, he a Venetian banker. Now they were taking another audacious leap, unstitching their ties with exquisite Venice to live in a roughly renovated stable in Tuscany.
Once again, it was love at first sight. Love for the timeless countryside and the ancient village of San Casciano dei Bagni, for the local vintage and the magnificent cooking, for the Tuscan sky and the friendly church bells. Love especially for old Barlozzo, the village mago, who escorts the newcomers to Tuscany’s seasonal festivals; gives them roasted country bread drizzled with just-pressed olive oil; invites them to gather chestnuts, harvest grapes, hunt truffles; and teaches them to caress the simple pleasures of each precious day. It’s Barlozzo who guides them across the minefields of village history and into the warm and fiercely beating heart of love itself.
A Thousand Days in Tuscany is set in one of the most beautiful places on earth–and tucked into its fragrant corners are luscious recipes (including one for the only true bruschetta) directly from the author’s private collection.
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Streetwise Tuscany Map – Laminated Road Map of Tuscany, Italy – Folding pocket size travel map
- ISBN13: 9781886705951
- Condition: New
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Streetwise Tuscany Map – Laminated Road Map of Tuscany, Italy – Folding pocket size travel map
Streetwise Tuscany Map – Laminated Road Map of Tuscany, Italy – Folding pocket size travel map
This map covers the following areas:
Main Tuscany Map 1:405,000
Florence Area Map 1:180,000
If you happen to be in driving around south of Siena, and it happens to be lunch time, you might want to head for a trattoria in San Angelo in Colle called Il Pozzo. Taking you to your seat in the small comfortable dining room, your host will recommend the pinci. Pinci? you ask, not knowing what it is exactly. Pinci, explains your host, is a hand made pasta and today it is being served al ragu, with a rich meat sauce. He seats you, hands you a well worn menu, folds his hands over his well endowed midsection and continues When I have a particularly long day my wife will look at me lovingly and ask if I want a little pinci for supper and I always say yes. Judging by the girth of your host, you realize that having a long day may not be such a bad thing in these parts and you put down your menu and tell him to bring on the pinci. You have made a wise choice.
Such is an excursion in Tuscany. You don’t push it here, you go with the flow. If someone asks “Pinci?,” you say “Yes please.” This is one of the most magical places on earth, and has been since well before the Romans, so trust that there is a reason that things are the way they are here and go with it. You won’t be disappointed and if you are, then you probably have a good story to tell anyway.
Now this advice applies to the authentic that you’ll find in Tuscany, and not the hyped up tourist venues. There’s plenty of authentic to be found and that’s where the STREETWISE® Tuscany Map comes in. Instead of the packaged itinerary that you find in most guide books, venture off on your own. Explore a little. Drive down that twisty road to a village that isn’t listed in anything that you’ve read. Find that piazza where you can enjoy an espresso in a café and do absolutely nothing except watch life take its course in true provincial fashion. Fill your picnic basket with goodies from several shops and head for the top of a Tuscan hillside where you can enjoy the view of sloping fields lined by cypress trees, softened by the warm hazy light that washes over everything.
It’s all there; you just need to find it. And find it you will with our STREETWISE® Tuscany Map; from the green hills and vineyards of Chianti to the beaches on the Tyrrhenian coast, to the peaks of the Apennines and on to the spas of Montecatini.
This map of the most famous region in Italy is complete with topographic terrain features and has all of the major A roads and local D roads to enable you to drive from town to town throughout Tuscany. Fully indexed and easy to read with scenic routes, regional / provincial boundaries, distance between points, car ferries, small and large towns, towns of special interest or charm, major urban areas, airfields, railways, bathing beaches, points of interest, state parks, campgrounds, mountain peak elevations, rivers and more.
A separate inset area map of Florence, capital of the Renaissance, will simplify your travels in and out of the city.
Our pocket size map of Tuscany is laminated for durability and accordion folding for effortless use. The STREETWISE® Tuscany map is one of several detailed and easy-to-read regional road maps designed and published by STREETWISE®. Buy your STREETWISE® Tuscany map today and you too can navigate Tuscany like a native. For a larger selection of our detailed travel maps simply type STREETWISE MAPS into the Amazon search bar.
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Tags: Adventure, Bittersweet, days, Thousand, tuscany
Review by Italian Dreamer for A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
Rating:
Having lived and worked in Italy during the 60s and early 70s, I found Marlena De Blasi’s recounting of her time spent in a very small town in Tuscany more in sync with what actually happens in such a place. It was easy for me to bring forth a picture in my mind and actually feel as if I was there. Mrs. Blasi’s characterizations of persons encountered was complete.
I would highly recommend “A Thousand Days in Venice” as an accurate interpretation of what happens in Italy on a daily basis.
Review by Susan Desisto for A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
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Do yourself a favor and read de Blasi’s “A Thousand Days in Venice” before embarking on the sequel “A Thousand Days in Tuscany”. It is not required reading, but you would be missing out on a delightful and unusual love story which sets up this book so perfectly.
Do not mistake this book for a cook book. It is so much more. De Blasi’s writing is a feast of sumptuous descriptions of not only food, but life in Tuscany and the joy of knowing she is living her life exactly as she wants to. After reading the book, I was taken aback to find how strongly I wanted to meet this person and be a part of her circle of friends. She is as warm and senuous as the olive oil drizzled on the crusty, roasted, tuscan breads. This book could have been filled with photographs, but they weren’t necessary. De Blasi’s descriptions will fill your mind’s eye with amazing visuals of life in rural Tuscany. I hope when you finish the book(s) you will feel, like I do, that your heart and soul have been amptly nourished …. and your taste-buds truly inspired!
Review by Gail Cooke for A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
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There’s no doubt that she’s ardent, intense; sometimes fiery. Marlena De Blasi is a passionate woman. Make that passionate with a capital P. A chef, she has a passion for food. Married to Fernando, a Venetian with “blueberry eyes, ” she has a passion for Italy. Her exuberance is so contagious that readers will relish every page of “A Thousand Days In Tuscany” (as well as the recipe that ends each chapter).
Ms. De Blasi waxes so enthusiastically about her subjects that it almost seems she writes in bold print to extol the virtues of wild herbs, fresh cheese, and the Tuscan twilight. She is a firm believer in love, and an advocate of life, as well as the living of it.
As many will remember with “A Thousand Days In Venice,” Ms. De Blasi first visited Italy perhaps a dozen years ago. On her first day there as she was sitting in a café with her traveling companions, she noticed an attractive man who seemed to be looking at her. Next, in true Danielle Steel style, a waiter told her that she had a phone call. It was, of course, the mysterious man urging her to meet him. She declined but returned to the café a few days later to find him there. They saw one another until she returned to St. Louis.
He soon followed. Fernando, we learned, was a banker who had never married. He would later say that he knew she was the one the moment he saw her. Although she did not share this initial surety she gave in to his pleas. Much to the astonishment and concern of her grown children and friends she returned with him to Venice where they married. She had imagined an apartment overlooking the Grand Canal. Instead she found a square concrete house on the Lido. Little did that matter – there was Fernando.
And, there is still Fernando who came home one day to announce that he has quit his job at the bank, and they’re moving to Tuscany. A redone stable lacking central heating, a phone, and other amenities in the small village of San Casciano dei Bagni becomes their new home. It does boast a closet size kitchen with a refrigerator akin to what one might find by a hotel mini bar. She writes of their contract with the stable owner: “There had been a well-defined agreement with Signora Lucci that the house would be clean and that it would be empty. Neither is the case.” The signora’s furniture is “all in the form of irrefutable junk.”
Nonetheless, the ever resourceful De Blasi is soon trimming the windows in her Venetian drapes complete with tasseled tiebacks, and delighting in her first taste of fried zucchini blossoms. The bar or restaurant in the village becomes almost their second home. It is there that they meet the villagers and take their morning espresso.
They’re adopted by an elderly gentleman, Barlozzo, who tells fascinating stories and indoctrinates them into the ways of the region. He teaches them how to pick olives- one by one, harvest grapes, and hunt for wild mushrooms. Florina or Flori becomes another special friend. She of the shy smile and warm heart. Times, we learn, have changed very little in San Casciano dei Bagni.
It is here by the site of the ancient Roman baths, where Horace and Ottaviano Augustus vacationed, that Ms. De Blasi learns “the great secret that living in the moment and being content with one’s portion makes for the best of all lives.”
If the reader is fortunate, that is only one small lesson learned during this idyllic sojourn in the Tuscan hills.
– Gail Cooke
Review by R. Nicholson for A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
Rating:
A small gem!
Every once in a while a book comes along that really moves me with its quiet beauty; “A Thousand Days in Tuscany” fits easily into this category.
Wonderfully written and easy to read with its soft descriptive prose; the words transport you from your comfortable sofa to a magnificent area of Italy that is renowned for its people and its unique landscape.
The book follows two new arrivals to the Tuscan region of Italy and tells of their interactions with the local residents; people who soon become part of their daily routine. Each chapter is a small vignette describing a situation (usually with a local personage), a trip and, above all, food; in fact all chapters get around to the discussion of, or preparation of food. Most chapters end with a recipe for the main dish that was describe in the chapter involved.
All in all, a warm, quiet and beautifully descriptive short book about an area of the world that all of us would probably love to visit at least once in our lifetime. Highly recommended.
Review by S. Warfield for A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
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By the time I was halfway through A Thousand Days in Tuscany by Marlena de Blasi, I wanted to get up at six each morning and bake the day’s bread with rosemary and olive oil. I wanted to walk up a hill and go to breakfast at a local bar and chat with the duke, a local man who took Marlena and her husband under his wing and showed them what life in the Tuscan village where they settled for a thousand days was really like.
Reading this book was a wonderful experience for me as I followed this couple through their days of integrating into the life, lives and especially the foods, wines and cooking of this area of Italy. Harvesting grapes for wine, picking olives and chestnuts are all part of a way of life that hasn’t changed for centuries in this part of the world, and de Blasi does an excellent job of taking us in our armchairs into that world. The natural romance of the area just adds to the romantic relationship that de Blasi and her husband have, and as the reader I experienced every lovely minute of their time in Tuscany.
The only thing I would have liked in addition to de Blasi’s lyrical writing was a collection of photos from her time there, but maybe the imagination does a better job.
Review by rizabiz for Streetwise Tuscany Map – Laminated Road Map of Tuscany, Italy – Folding pocket size travel map
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This map is a great laminated folding map of the country-side, which clearly marks the roads and is great for driving. If you want to bicycle or hike, this map does not have enough detail. When you arrive in Tuscany stop in any gift shop and pick up the Green Toscana map for about $6-7 euros. Streetwise is a starter map and note that it does not have any mini-city streets included. It will not give you any more detail than main driving roads. If you want a map of Florence or any other major or minor city you must look elsewhere.
Review by Carl Stewart for Streetwise Tuscany Map – Laminated Road Map of Tuscany, Italy – Folding pocket size travel map
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If you are serious about driving through Tuscany, you will need something more than this map, which is pretty basic. Fine if you intend to travel only on the autostrade and other main roads, but one of the joys of driving in this region is finding small roads, sometimes unpaved, which can lead to small medieval hamlets (known as ‘borghe’)that have remained basically unchanged for centuries.
There are a number of excellent maps produced but in my many travels in Italy, I have always found the maps produced by the Touring Club Italiano (TCI), and distinguished by the bright green cover with the TCI logo, to be unfailingly brilliant. Difficult to find in this country, they are widely available at gas stations, newsstands, and the like, in Italy.
Review by Mrs. D for Streetwise Tuscany Map – Laminated Road Map of Tuscany, Italy – Folding pocket size travel map
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I stopped to write a review when I read the other ones you have posted. I have to disagree with them completely. I have always relied on Streetwise and this map was no exception. It helped us both in the car and on foot, and we never had a complication. In quaint areas such as this I think you will always have discrepincies, even still we had a fabulous visit without any confusion. Actually, it would have been lovely to be lost there! But that was not the case.
Review by Patricia M. Case for Streetwise Tuscany Map – Laminated Road Map of Tuscany, Italy – Folding pocket size travel map
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We’ve used this map series in many places, and highly recommend it for ease of use and TRANSPORT. It’s also durable, and we’ve wouldn’t travel without it.
Review by Blue Eyes for Streetwise Tuscany Map – Laminated Road Map of Tuscany, Italy – Folding pocket size travel map
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I love these streetwise maps. They make travel so easy. Small enough to keep on your lap, so you don’t have to unfold and refold a bulky travel road map. Not as detailed, but there aren’t so many streets in Tuscany that that issue presents a problem.