Exploring Calci

Our little house in Italy is up in the Tuscan hills, just outside of the small town of Calci.  We wandered down into town to buy a few groceries and have some pizza for lunch.

This is the road that runs by our house.  Ours is the orange-coloured one to the right.  There are 2 houses attached, and another neighbour across the street.  A bit beyond us there are a few other houses, but overall we're pretty isolated.  As you can tell the roadways in these little towns are very narrow.

Castlemaggiore, which is an even smaller town on the way to Calci.  Beautiful, no?

More Castlemaggiore.

More narrow streets.  These streets are 2-way, believe it or not.  Not only that but the city bus runs down this road.  Imagine driving up this hill and running face to face with a city bus!

Getting close to Calci.

There are also packs and packs of cyclists going up and down the hills.  Very scenic, but crazy!

Calci.

Downtown Calci.

More Calci.

Calci again.

We stopped by a Pizzaria for lunch, and they announced that they don't serve Pizza for lunch.  (We found out the next day how much work it is to make a pizza in a pizza oven.  Stay tuned!)  So we had various varieties of pasta, then wandered back (uphill!) home for a nap.  It's tough being on holiday!  We were told that there is a market in Calci on Thursday evenings, so we drove back into town to visit the market and pick up something to make for dinner.  We bought some fruit and veggies at the market, and hung about for a bit enjoying some beer and wine (because of course they sell beer and wine at the organic veggie market).

I had a couple of adventures trying to buy bread and peaches.  I picked out a nice loaf and the vendor said "Oh those one are free," pointing to the end of the table.  "What, free?"  "Yes, free."  "Oh it's ok, I'll just buy one of those ones," pointing to the other end of the table."  "No, those ones are free."  "Are they day old or something?"  "The price is marked on them."  (You can tell there is some communications going on here!  I wish these guys could speak Chinese!)  "The ones that don't have a name on them."  Oh!  The rest are reserved, ok figured it out.

Then I tried to buy some peaches.  "Do you have an order?"  "No," sadly ...

But eventually we bought our bread, peaches, etc, enjoyed our drinks (and watched as all the vendors bought produce off each other - I think it's slightly unusual when they get tourists there) and headed over to the co-op to buy something for dinner.

Well of course the co-op was closed!

So we headed over to a second pizzeria and this time we were successful in buying pizza for dinner!

(I realize I've been negligent in taking pictures of all the delicious food here, so I'll try to rectify that!  In the meantime please enjoy the beautiful scenery of the traditional Tuscan towns!)

(PS, we noticed in town that a LOT of cars have damage to the side-mirrors, and more than a few have scrapes to the side panels.  Our car is pristine, despite being slightly above average size for the cars around these parts.  I just mention this because ...  did you notice the width of the streets in our area?)