Tag: About Tuscany

Tuscany gardens

Tuscany garden

Spring all year round.
Tuscany’s largest garden center is just outside of Pietrasanta, Giardini della Versilia, a gigantic greenhouse just outside the gates of Pietrasanta, is one of Italy’s top garden centers in terms of size, selection, and quality.

Inaugurated on March 20th to bloom with the spring season, Giardini della Versilia’s 6500 square meters of covered space, filled with plants of all kinds, gardening tools and materials, patio furniture, and much more, are bounded by the nursery: one enormous “flowerbed” bursting with essences and colors.
The garden center proposes a unique assortment, from “prefab” solutions ready for installation to consulting and delivery services but above all, ideas for new forms and atmospheres for the garden, parks, and any other open space.

The Giovanneli family’s new center expresses their love for nature, with an eye to wellbeing. Nature, because after parking in the center’s ample lot, visitors leave “human time” behind and embark on a path that follows natural rhythms, pervaded by stimulating natural fragrances, illuminated by Nature’s colors.

Wellbeing, because Giardini della Versilia is a wonderful spot for just passing time with family and friends and strolling in a green garden world, breathing in the scents of spring all year round. And for a restful pause in the relaxation/refreshment area that welcomes visitors on the upper floor.

Web-site: www.giardinia.mobi

Tuscany itineraries

Tuscany wine

In vino veritas
Convinced that there is no more sane and simple way to live than the Montecarlo way, you may now be ready to join us on a country tour.
Landscapes that have not been overly re-modelled (sometimes ruined in the process) offer scope for the immagination, for self-expression and creativity. just look around and see what appeals to your taste: Montecarlo DOC reds or whites (especially Trebbiano, Malvasia, Sauvignon, Chardonnay, San Giovese, Canaiolo, Ciliegiolo, Merlot, Pinot, Cabernet, Sirah and Roussanne) and excellent golden olive oil (with an acidity level below 0.4% and an almondy after-taste), for example.

Many Montecarlo events are centered on wine. In mid-May Via Vinaria offers tastings of DOC and IGT wines with a Wine Bus for carefree visits to the Fattorie; Montecarlo in Festa honours the Madonna del Soccorso on 8 september but for 10 days glories in the grape, local gastronomy and cultural and musical entertainment; the Festival of New Wine and Oil takes place on the second wekend in November. Then of course there is the summer Jazz and Wine Festival.

With its surroundin vineyards and olive groves, Montecarlo has existed at least since 1000 AD. Its people moved from a nearby site called Vvinaia (property of the Duchi della Tuscia) after suffering a disastrous attack by the Florentines: soon thereafter in 1333 Carlo IV of boemia founded his “Montecarlo” by building the Fortress. Little has chenged, at least architecturally and agriculturally, since that time. Montecarlo wines were appreciated even in the 16th century, by Pope Paul Farnese III and Gregory XII and many others. In 1999 the wine route became “officially” identified; see www.stradadelvinoeoliolucca.it for more information and enjoy Montecarlo wines in Lucca at Enoteca Calasto (piazza S. Giovanni) and many other fine establishments.

Italian Festival

Barga

Barga proclaims itself “the most Scottish town in Italy”. These two articles give some idea why. First, Sonia Ercolini describes the town’s own very special summer “sagra”.

The Barga Fish and Chips Festival started from 23rd July to 19th August. every evening from 7.30 pm onwards you can try out our special fish and chips, fried in the best traditional Barga-Scottish way. As a matter of fact some of the very first restaurants to serve fish and chips in Scotland were opened up by our very own “barghigiani” when they emigrated there at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

When many of these emigrants came back to Italy, traditional fish and chips then made its appearance in Barga. In the early 1980’s to honour the history of the Barga emigrants, the barga Sports Association decided to put fish and chips on the menu at the traditional “Muletto” Festival. It was so successful that it gradually became the “Fish and Chips Festival”. Lately the success of the Festival has also been recognised in the UK with coverage in the “The Indipendent” newspapaer and special BBC TV report.

At the Festival, other tasty dishes are served alongside the traditional fish and chips: various first courses, grilled meat, cold dishes and typical home-made cakes and dessert.
The event is held at the Barga Football Stadium the “J. Moscardini Stadium”. The stadium is completely covered so you can eat there even in bad weather.

After dinner, entertainment guaranteed with live music and dancing and special evenings dedicated to piano-bar, karaoke and the 60’s, 70’s and 80’smusic. There is also a special play area where children can enjoy themselves in safety on “bouncy castle” games. Come along and enjoy the fun and the fish and chips.

Web-site:  www.asbarga.com

Tuscan cooking

Tuscan cooking

From the beach to the kitchen
A gastronomic competition that can change your life. Aprons girded and utensils at the ready! For the 18th edition of “A tavola sulla spiaggia” the epic clash of fabulous dishes from ancient recipe books and others that valorize traditional on the beach picnic foods at the Roma di levante arena in late August.

Besides tasty tidbits, the event has proved its capability to “dish up” unexpected talents: many of the partecipants in past edition have transformed a hobby into a profession at which they excel. Take Toni Brancatisano, a Pietrasanta resident originally from Australia, the house-wife contender at the 2008 edition who recently took first place at the “La scuola-cucina di classe” gastronomic talent show and now hosts a program on Gambero Rosso Channel.

Or the Roman princess Orietta Boncompagni Ludovisi who in 2006 tickled Forte’s palates with the turquoise cabochon dessert she invented just for fun and went on to author the novel and very popular “Guida delle migliori pizzerie d’Italia”. Or Fabiana Giacomotti, a journalist and writer who delighted us in 2007 with her Mediterranean antipasto and has now launched Dolcelieve, the first-ever line of haute patisserie for gluten intolerants with a sweet tooth.

Web-site: www.atavolasullaspiaggia.it

Italy coast

Italy coast - Forte dei Marmi

Surf’s up
At the Pontile, biting salt spray and crashing waves, walls of water, barrels and riptides: riding the giants, dreamin’ California… Forte dei Marmi’s sea like you never seen it: the best place in the world to be. In the tube.
It’s said that caution is a natural human mechanism. Caution, not cluck. And maybe this dualistic thought caution vs fear is what runs through the mind of the surfer riding the Versilia waves.

On that same sea, so safe and welcoming so perfect for kids and families, that canturn into an amazing arena of impetuous sewlls, barreling and mean; waves to catch, attack, caress and follow into whitewater. Pur collective California dream plays out in a bit of versilia’s sea near Forte dei marmi’s Pontile. An expanse of water that has become the Tyrrhenian playground for stoked foam-breathers on bords.

Everything turns on the waves, whenever, wherever: little snappers, crumbly waves, or big, glassy giants, perfect, pitching, peeling. An eternal pilgrimage in search of ideal spot, even if the best spots are right there, around the Forte Pontile and a tad downscaled at Marina di Pietrasanta. The surfer suffering from perennial abstinence thus sets off looking for a nice wave to share with some good friends. Bundled in a wetsuit in winter or reveling in skin-sea contact in a summer.

The rest, all the rest, is an explosion of utter freedom and pure passion. The kind that drives you to frenetically click all the surflines to see where the surf’s up and then “dive” down from the remotest inland sites in Versilia by scooter, Ape, car, bike, VW bus…. any means of locomotion is the right one for getting to the beach or the Pontile, board under arm, and paddling out. This is what it’s all about. Someone defined it “the innermost limits of pure fun”.

A step into liquid time. Momentum. Passion. Passion that takes you, with your board buddies to hangouts like the Nimbus Club. Or to explore the specialized shops – on the increase throughout Versilia. The same passion that, in a business key, has spawned a host of boardshops that build to order (Ola Surfboards of pietrasant, for example).

The sea is an open-air stage on wich the curtain never falls: in winter as in summer, at dawn as at the dusk of a long, long day the blue crush is a never-ending attraction.
A “fatal” attraction, while all around unpredictable and unsettling, the unceasing wind and the whipping sea foam vehemently caress the senses of the surfer on a living curl at the morning of the earth.