San Gimignano
Tuscans do not eat dinner until at least 8 o’clock at night. In fact, it is perfectly normal to be sitting down to eat at 9 or even 10 in the evening. It is therefore customary to have an ‘aperativo’ before dinner - consisting of a drink and a snack to tide you over until the final evening meal.
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Or perhaps it is the other way around - the relaxed lifestyle and terrible time-keeping of the Italians makes the aperativo last for so long that dinner is always inevitably late…
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In any case, it is with this intention that your group of friends stops into San Gimignano this afternoon.
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This small but well-known Tuscan city has only approximatly 7,000 inhabitants. It’s famed for its contribution to the top-wine list with its Vernaccia, the first wine to be given the distinction of the D.O.C.G. (Denominazione Origine Controllato Garantito) wine classification system, and also one of the few great Tuscan white varieties.
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In the province of Siena, San Gimignano dates back to Etruscan times, some 300 years BC. Known as the city of towers, the town was once home to dozens of towers, of which only 14 remain. This is actually quite a significant number to have still standing, since many towers in Italy were knocked down throughout history, usually as a symbol of peace, but San Gimignano has been able to maintain so many, and thus earn the tome of the ‘tower city’.
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Today when you enter into the walled Tuscan town, it is via the Bastion that forms the city’s wall of protection. You wander the paved streets, passing through piazzas and perusing the shop windows.
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The narrow cobbled streets are filled with shops vending typical and traditional products. Stores of old-style kitchen products and delicious local delicacies are interspersed with coffee shops (the Italian word for which is ‘bar’) from whence eminates decliciuous aromas of the brew that Italians surely do make the best.
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Wandering from store to store you lunch on tastings of delicious cheeses, hams, and dip fresh-baked breads into olive oil squeezed from plump olives grown just outside the city walls.
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In a little bar in a bigger piazza, you seat yourselves at a wonky table and order 4 glasses of local wines, an ‘antipasto’ plate of nibbles, and while the time away under the Tuscan sun.
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Nearby a restaurant kitchen starts tantilising you with the lush odors eminating from within.
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After the generous aperativo, you decide that you must create room in your belly for a big meal at this restaurant, so you down the last of your wine, enjoying it to the last drop, and head off for a walk.
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Cobbled streets rollercoaster up and down, as you pace the pavement through the ancient city. Eventually you exit out of the Bastion, and walk around the outskirts of the walls. It is amazing, and quite difficult to grasp, the history of this place, the age.
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Straining over the noise of cars passing on the ring road outside the centre where no cars can enter, you try to imagine life here in centuries past.
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What would have this town be like 500 or 800 years ago? How much is it changed? If you could bring back a San Gimignano local from centuries past, what would they think of their home nowadays?
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You walk up some narrow, winding stairs and find yourselves in a playgrounds, swings and all. It is quiet and only an elderly man walks his dog in one corner. Otherwise, this land is yours to conquer.
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You sit on a park bench for a few minutes, bathed in the fading-summer sun. Noone speaks. It is so tranquil. You look up at the fat white clouds that pass on by, noone of which has ever been the same in the history of the world.
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As the sun starts to turn its back on you, you stand, and contine to walk on.
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Eventually, you wind your way back at the main entrance of the city. There is a low wall that edges along the outer area of the city. From here, the view is just breathtaking!
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The Tuscan countryside in all its splendour is laid out before you. You try to capture the colours, the breathtakingness of the view with a hundred snaps of your camera lens that cannot pinch even a small amount of the beauty.
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In slow degrees, the light slowly fades and you tear yourself away from the fading of the view before your eyes. You turn back towards the view from San Gimignano, where you intended to stop for one drink, but unable to resist, you head back into the city walls to search for the restaurant who draws you back in for what is sure to be an amazing Tuscan meal.
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Heading back in through the city walls, you imagine what it must be like to live here. To know all the locals, to head out to nearby Siena for an afternoon and have this amazing city awaiting you. Imagine this being your everyday, your norm.Â
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When you print out your photos from this day in weeks to come, you will not see the rays of light that bathe the land, the birds will not sing as you drape your eyes on the scenery. You will not feel the comfort of being with your friends, and possibly, you wont have that wonderful tingle of having smiled too much for too long in one day. But you will, you will always, have the memories.
Tags: florence, italy, school, tuscany cooking class, wine class
