Tuscany Road Trip
We left the city looking for something real, earthy, connected, a road trip day of getting back to nature. I realize that sounds bougie. But wait— there’s more. This is a road trip in Tuscany. As the four of us waited to rent our Tesla, I wondered if we’d actually find any joyful, unprogrammed moments or any unedited earth.
The first stop was a farm down a long and stony, red dirt road. I’d seen it before– in movies and watercolor paintings. A clay lane leading under gnarled olive trees, rolling down a hill to mud puddles in the bottom. Over the next knoll, taught grids of grape trellis vanished into the horizon of hilltops and stone castles.
Near the farmhouse, four roadtrippers climbed from the Tesla. Each was drawn to different things. I knelt to greet an old lab, the color of clay pots. Then, I found a little garden holding masses of artichokes and a climbing Banks rose spilling out of a tree. Usually, gardens and dogs keep me looking down. But not here. Nothing could compete with the sweeping views of those olive groves and vineyards we’d just driven through.
Another was fascinated by the farmer, a woman from Sardinia. You can get there from here on a 500-mile ferry ride. They call Sardinia the first Blue Zone– one of five places on earth where people live to be over 100 years old.
One was into the wines and olive oil made here. And the pecorino cheeses made from 650 sheep on the next hillside. (Italian word of the day: pecora=sheep.)
And one, well all, by the views of lanes and groves.
I went on a 3-mile walk through the lane, hoping to find what the owner says may be an Etruscan burial site. But I only found more enchanting little roads under more silver-leaved olive trees.
We left with the smells of silver grays, red rocks, sheep cheese, and a wood fire buzz. We left with music whistling through the hills– because our Telsa, on her own, decided to turn up the radio. It took us, who were car geeks, half an hour to figure out how to override that bad decision.
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