"The trouble with travelling back later on is that you can never repeat the same experience."                                                 Michael Palin  

 The Corollary:

"Returning allows you to see the things you missed the first time ."    Stuart Jameson

We got away reasonably early from Bologna and all went well for the first 10 kms before traffic virtually came to a halt. We were on a slip road next to the main autostrada, which generally follows the same route but [normally] about 40 kmh slower [90 vs 130]. However, today our "slow road" was crawling at about 10 kmh while the "fast [tolls] road" was totally stopped. Drivers were out of their cars/trucks getting excited with each other about why they were not moving...hands waving, lots of shouting, lots of people on cell phones. About four kms up the road, we suddenly started to speed up for no reason other than people on our road were no longer "sticky beaking" at the problem on the fast road. It transpired that there had been an accident on the autostrada and the police had stopped everything on that road. So while we sped away at a sedate 90 kmh, they were stuck with the 0 kmh model. We are learning that some aspects of driving behaviour in Italy are not so different to anywhere else in the world .

The trip south took us through the top end of the Apennines as we crossed from the Po Valley to the top end of Tuscany. Because It was a reasonably short run from Bologna, we opted for a non-tolls road and again, it turned out to be quite winding and, in parts, narrow.

We arrived at about 2 pm after a false stop and a "hard going" conversation with locals seeking directions to our final stop. The final leg of the journey got a little hairy when we diverted to call into a supermarket for supplies and Carla re-routed us to the most direct route from there. We ended up on this very narrow, very steep downhill track which had items on the back seat tumbling forward. When those things happened to be a couple of bottles of wine, we were getting quite concerned. We are getting the idea that if we don't follow Carla’s first set of instructions, we end up doing penance somewhere along the way. However, we arrived safe and sound and more importantly – so did the wine .

Our accommodation here in Buggiano is a reworked watermill converted to three apartments, the largest of which is occupied by our landlady. We are a five minutes slow and careful drive from town on another very narrow road where vehicles travelling in opposite direction have to pull off the road [as best they can] to pass one another.

We decided after a month on the run [so to speak], we would take things slower on this longer stopover. So on the first day we took a leisurely stroll into the town [about two kms]. The road into town follows a stream which has some quite deep pools and we were surprised by the number of fish of eating-size in them – mainly trout. The stream has a series of small waterfalls as it tracks down the valley and works its way through some tidy bush. Very, very picturesque. Lots of blind corners, however, so the local practice is to toot your horn before you get to the corner – we are learning to be as noisy as the locals as we drive up and down these roads .

Buggiano [or Borgo a Buggiano to give it its full title] is a small town of only about 8,000 people. However, they do have the cheapest gelatos we have struck in Italy to date. Some of their flavours are quite interesting and very tasty – such as hazel nut and pistachio. Buggiano has a number of smaller offspring – Buggiano Castello [a small hamlet surrounding an old castle] which is above the town, and Colle di Buggiano, a small hamlet about two kms further back again in the hills. We have definitely got off the flat plains and are now well and truly in the hills. Early in our stay here we drove into the next large town [Montecatini Terme] for lunch and a walk around. As its name 'terme'  implies, the town is built around the spa pools which have been an attraction since Roman times. Today, it is still loaded with foreign tourists and the shops have probably got a lot more expensive. The town has some of the richer trappings of life, such as a race course, polo grounds and lots of green parks .

The weather has cooled down considerably from the high 30s that we were getting up north and it looks like we will get thunderstorms at some point in the next week. Night temperatures have dropped to the mid-teens and we had to locate the duvet - a pleasant change. We planned our day trips around small towns [Buggiano, Bagni di Lucca, Pescia, Collodi and Vinci] and the larger cities [Pisa, Lucca, Pistoia, Florence]. We will use the train for the big city runs.

We visited Pisa and Lucca early in our stay here. Stu needed to get the former out of his system [so to speak] because when we last visited it in 2006, we were rushing to return a rental car and jump on a train for Rome. So that stop was very fleeting and to make matters worse, our camera’s battery failed after the first photo. So a return to Pisa was inevitable, even if a climb up the tower was not. When we arrived, we found a [small] crowd of about 3,000 tourists, all doing those stupid things such as posing as if they were holding up the tower to prevent it from falling over . A bit weird because none of them looked like they had spent a day in the gym training for such a bizarre task. And the queues.... miles long to go up the tower, to enter the cathedral, to enter the baptistery. Not for these kids, so after taking outside photos and leaving the others to prop up the tower and wear out the inside of the church and baptistry, we headed back to the train.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in Lucca which is still as nice as we recalled it from our stay there last year. On that previous visit, because we were actually staying in Lucca, we tended to mirror the locals and when the shops closed for the early afternoon siesta [here usually 12.30 – about 3.30 or 4], we headed back to our hotel room for a siesta as well. This time, however, there was no hotel room to rest up in so we had to brave it with all of these darn tourists and, boy, were there lots of them. Bugger!! Fortunately, most of them tended to gather in the more accessible part of the town by the main gates which left our favourite watering/spritzing hole in the area furthest from the railway/bus stations slightly less congested and relatively free of non-locals . So we holed up there for a spritz or two before heading back to the train and Buggiano.

At this stage of the trip, we are in Pinocchio country. Carlo Lorenzini, the author of "Pinocchio", changed his pen name to Carlo Collodi after the town where he wrote his famous children’s book. It would appear that nothing is as it seems and the Pinocchio that we all remember from the Walt Disney movie is a bit different from the story that Lorenzini [aka Collodi] originally wrote. The original is somewhat darker than the Disney version [but then so many of the early fables and stories such as the Grimm's Fairy Tales were somewhat dark and probably would be considered non-PC today.] At Collodi, there is the Parco di Pinocchio, a large adventure theme park for children [and young at heart adults]. Virtually directly across the road from the Parco is the Giardini Garzoni, a wonderful Italian garden with fountains and swans and fish and flowers and statues and waterfalls . Really is very attractive. The villa itself dates back to the 1600s and the gardens to the 1700s. Unfortunately, the adjacent villa was being refurbished when we visited so for us it was a walk around the gardens and a look at the butterfly house with a large collection of tropical butterflies. All very attractive and a great way to spend a relaxing afternoon in the sun.

Earlier that day we had stopped at the nearby town of Pescia which had a lovely feel to it. Our guru – Fred - had pointed us to a particular restaurant in the town but on arrival we found it also was under renovation and not doing meals of any sort [to date the number of recommended stops by Fred and others that happen to be under renovation is a little alarming; however, we will persevere.] Fortunately, we found another which worked well. Their pappardelle and porcini were very good indeed.

Today, we headed south to visit Vinci and then Montegufoni . Vinci is the home town of the great man himself - Leonardo. Actually, he was born in Anchiano, a little hamlet about 3 kms outside Vinci [but I guess Leonardo di Anchiano wouldn't have had the same ring to it.] Being born out of wedlock, he simply took the name "of Vinci" and clearly that worked. The guy was a genius. To draw from Wikipedia, he was an "Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, mathematician, sculptor, scientist, botanist, architect, musician and writer".   He was restricted only by the materials that he had to work with and you could imagine him looking at an everyday chore [back then] and saying, "How can make this easier/simpler/work better [all of the above]?" We visited the museum commemorating his work and while it [the museum] was small, it was really well done. Probably better for those mechanically minded but others can appreciate how enterprising and cross-disciplined he was. A very interesting visit in a lovely Tuscan setting.

We then drove on to Montegufoni. Our friend, Helen, had stayed there some years ago and had said that it was worth a visit. She was not wrong. Set on a hilltop surrounded by grapevines and olive groves, the Castello certainly dominates the area. It dates back to the 1100s and has changed hands quite a few times over the years. Today, it is a type of agriturismo [presumably the adjacent grape vines are part of the working estate]. A very pleasant day all round even if the rain bucketed down on the way home. We can't complain too much about the weather because we have only had a couple of rainy days since we arrived in Italy.

Tomorrow, we will have a look at Pistoia which is just to the east of us. So till our next epistle...