Tuscany is the Italy of the imagination made real: rolling hills striped with cypress, honey-stone towns on every ridge, vineyards and olive groves running to a blue horizon, and a light in the late afternoon that has drawn painters and…
Victoria’s Complete Guide to Florence
Florence is the city where the Renaissance was born, a compact, walkable jewel on the Arno where Michelangelo’s David, Botticelli’s Venus and Brunelleschi’s impossible dome sit within a few minutes of one another. It is a city of art and…
The Long Way Round – Tuscany Day 3
I woke before the alarm, although I suspect I would have even if I had forgotten to set one. There are some mornings when the light seems to wake you before the world has the chance. I dressed quietly in…
The City to Myself
I woke early in the villa, before the house had quite decided to be awake, and lay for a while watching the light come up green through the shutters, listening to the particular silence that belongs to places built high…
Fields of Gold
I woke early, which almost never happens to me, and I think it was the hills that did it. They had spent all of yesterday resting on their ridges in the distance, patient as cats, and sometime during the night…
Where the Hills Begin
I left the city in the morning, and for the first hour the road still seemed to have somewhere important to be. Then, without my quite noticing when, it forgot its hurry. The lanes narrowed and began to climb, the…
