The last time we came to San Gimignano, a beautiful medieval village in the heart of Tuscany, we were in such a rush with the family rushing us and trying to do a million things in one day! We decided then that the village is definitely worth another trip. And this weekend was perfect.
We woke up late (a typical Deeb family Saturday!),  and we lazily went to S.M.N. Stazione. We picked up il treno regionale ticket to Poggibonsi F.S. (5.10EUR/person) from the automatic ticket machine. These things are truly easy; apparently not for most people though,  if you consider the guy in front of us took 8 full minutes to get his tickets!
Arriving at the Boggibonsi station, we picked up the bus to San Gimignano after a quick café at the station bar. The sights on the road up to the village (20 minutes in the bus) are simply amazing. The Chianti hills and vineyards, the scattered clouds, a few olive groves here and there, and the fields of sunflowers soon to be picked. All beautiful!
The village itself is pretty interesting. Pia’s camera (Nikon D90) was working overtime today
In her own words: “Anywhere you look there’s something to shoot!”

True! There is the wonderful scenery of the Tuscan hillside all below you and extending forever. There’s also the remaining towers of San Gimignano (most of the towers were destroyed over the years/during the world wars). The whole village is built with same stones as the towers, but in some places you can see different stone patterns/types in the same building! Italians!

Pia will post another blog later on with her own thoughts about the day. She will probably write about how she forced me to taste the wonderful gelato made by the “world champion” of ice cream makers! Or maybe about the tasty lunch we had in the park just outside the old city entrance.
We’re in the train going back to Firenze now. We picked up a couple of yogurts and resting our feet in the train. I should probably turn off the netbook and get some sleep before we arrive.

Here’s a compilation of some awesome pictures we shot at Cinque Terre, Genova.

Riomaggiore

Manarola

Corniglia

Vernazza

Monterosso

Le Cinque Terre are five beautiful towns situated on the Italian Riviera,  in the Ligurian region of Italy. The five villages are: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore.

These fives towns are famous for their beautiful landscapes that overlook the sea, their panoramic terraces and lack of visible modern development!

Cinque Terre products:

• Pesto (Sauce made from basil leaves, garlic, salt, olive oil, pine nuts and pecorino cheese)
• Anchovies of Monterosso
• Focaccia (Bread topped with herbs)
• Farinata (Bread made with chick-pea flour)
• Sciachetrà (Sweet wine)
• Grappa (Brandy made with the pomace left from winemaking)
• Limoncello
• Grapes
• Olives

Here are some photos of the coast of the Italian Riviera as seen from the towns
The posts that will follow will be displaying photos for each of the towns.

This weekend was very special. We went on Friday afternoon to Cinque Terre in the Italian region of Liguria. The Cinque (five) Terre (lands) are indeed five beautiful towns (Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza & Monterosso) right on the Ligurian coast, all connected by multiple pedestrian paths through the mountains. The towns are also accessible by , train, buses and ferries.
The towns’ economy basically depend on fishing and tourism. Le Cinque Terre are also considered an important national park and a protected marine and land reserve.

Well, right after we arrived to Riomaggiore, the first of the five towns we learned first-hand how friendly everyone is around here… including the Ligurian cats!

You can see beautiful chubby cats everywhere, and they are not afraid of people. All seem to be well fed, well treated and they don’t mind the tourists. We’ve been away from our cat “The Boss” for a while now, and feeling home-sick just a little bit. My husband went to pet one of the cats sitting on side of the street minding its business, and the cat went all cuddly and nice, leaning to rub its chubby head on the back of his hand. It stayed there, and allowed me to pet it myself. Later that night we found another cat (in the next town) that did the same. And another one… well it was raining and the cat was sitting under a bench trying to hide from the sparse drops of rain. Still it welcomed our petting hands on its head, for a little while before it looked away (probably saying to itself: “tourists!”).

Well I decided to write this blog and post some of the pics we got for the Cinque Terre cats!

We did much more than pet cats here. Maybe that should go in another post!

I’ve been eating Spaghetti ala Bolognese for as long as I remember. Well, I thought I have anyway. After I got married though, I truly tasted the Bolognese sauce for the first time (as it should be) and it was even greater.
Well, today we wanted to go to Bologna to taste the real thing. We took a train from Rifredi train station (in Florence) at about 11:30am and got there shortly before 1PM. An easy ride, and we had some time to study what parts of the meetings we missed this week.
Arriving at the train station we did what we customary do as soon as we get to a new city: get the bus tickets. The lady at the tourist information office almost laughed at us, saying we should simply walk over to the center of the city. We got a free map from the information office and waited about 10 minutes for the bus that goes to the center anyway.
We spent a few minutes in the center near the Neptune fountain then quickly decided to go get some food!
We found a nice cozy place (Pietro’s Trattoria) we read (on some blog) it had good food. Pia had the Tagliatelle with Bolognese sauce, and I asked for some Large Raviolli. Well, the tagliatelle was good (as one would imagine), and the raviolli were indeed large, all three pieces! And the wine was simply great. I’ve been drinking Chianti and other Tuscan wines for a while, but this was truly wonderful. It’s a shame we didn’t get any with us, but I forgot to ask for it when we had to leave (some Dutch guy who was behind us struck a conversation with me right after after lunch).
After lunch we strolled around the center, saw the hordes of university students with weird dresses and gothic look filling the streets. It was truly disturbing!
Finally we went back to the center and waited for an hour or so for our train. We tried to find a bus back to the train station, but an old lady looked at us funny and explained (in Italian) that it’s about 500m away, only one bus stop anyway. Well, we walked over and took the train back.
A nice day all in all, I should have ordered the Spaghetti ala Bolognese myself. Maybe next time!

Menu di oggi (today’s menu):

- Primo: Cannelloni con ricotta e spinaci (Spinach & ricotta cannelloni)
- Secondo: Bistecca e ruccola (Steak on a bed of arugula)

We didn’t actually have a salad, but it was too much to eat already.

The recipes are truly simple.

For the primo: We got a box of cannelloni from the supermarket (250gr). We also found a plastic box of spinach all cleaned, cut and ready. Now that’s convenient
On top of that, a 200gr pack of ricotta cheese actually costs less than Labneh. So put that with the spinach and mix, then stuff it all in the canneloni (do not pre-bake those) Pia: season with salt and pepper to taste, also some extra virgin olive oil here to bring the mix together.

Now for the “hard part”, make some “roux”, mix with milk a bit of mascarpone (we had this laying around) and season with salt and pepper.
All in the oven for about 20-30 minutes. Wow! We had half at lunch and I finished off the rest earlier in the evening.

Pia adds: Abdallah missed the fact that I added some grated Parmigiano Reggiano to both the sauce, and on top of the dish before sending it to the oven. It gives a nice color and a wonderful extra taste.

As for the secondo: well, it’s a piece of steak. Season it with some salt and pepper. Put some extra virgin olive oil in the pan (no idea why!) and put the steak there for a couple of minutes. Done!

Of course, just doing the above may give you the worse meal ever. But with my wife, it tastes and looks great. She makes it sound so easy. Heh!

Check out the pics below. And let me know how lucky I am.

“When it rains, it’s definitely time for soups and stews!” says Abdallah.

Today it rained in the morning,  so I decided to cook something special for my dear husband.
It’s been three weeks now that I am cooking almost everyday. The COOP is near, and I ‘m managing with the ingredients here.
So far we’ve had: Tawouk, Mjaddara, Riz w Fasouliah, Balila, Fasouliah Bzeit and Tabbouleh (without mint & bulgur). But we were still craving for stews with rice, and Abdallah had mentioned earlier craving for ‘Aleb Khodra’ (Lebanese vegetables stew).  I had found earlier in the frozen section of the COOP, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables for Minestrone*, and I thought  I could give this traditional italian dish a Lebanese twist

Meat, onion, tomato sauce and paste, pepper and oregano… and cooked rice.

Minestrone: Thick Italian soup made with vegetables, often with the addition of pasta or rice. Common ingredients include beans, onions, celery, carrots, stock, and tomatoes.

The weather has been very hot in Italy this summer. Rome, Florence, Venice, no matter where we go the weather is hot and humid.

August has ended and September seems to be breezy.

This morning the sky was cloudy and it suddenly started to rain, it only lasted 3 minutes though.
An hour later, it started raining again, and this time heavy rain. I went out to our  small balcony and took some shots.

“Galleria degli Uffizi” or The Uffizi Gallery, is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world. It is housed in the Palazzo degli Uffizi, a beautiful palace in Florence, Italy.

Today, I was very excited about visiting the Uffizi Gallery! It was a dream coming true.
For an art lover, seeing the works of the Grand Masters (Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Donatello…) is actually a big deal. And I have to thank my husband for that

We went in the afternoon, not worrying about the long lines in front of the museum, because of our membership in “The Amici Degli Uffizi”. We went to gate number 2, a nice lady handed us our tickets and directed us to the entry.
I was a bit mad because it was forbidden to take photos, and despite that, many couples were taking out their small point & shoot digital cameras and snapping shots secretly. I couldn’t do the same with my 0.703 Kilograms Nikon D90!

We wandered around the rooms and corridors of the Uffizi, amazed by it’s grandeur and beauty, the ceiling frescoes and the large collection of roman sculptures and paintings.

The most popular paintings housed by the museum:

• Sandro Botticelli (Primavera, Birth of Venus,  Adoration of the Magi)
• Leonardo da Vinci (The Annunciation, The Adoration of the Magi)
• Albrecht Dürer (The Adoration of the Magi)
• Michelangelo (The Doni Tondo)
• Raphael (Madonna of the Goldfinch, Luigi de’ Rossi)
• Titian (Flora, Venus of Urbino)
• Caravaggio (Bacchus, The Sacrifice of Isaac, Medusa)
• Rembrandt Van Rijn (The two selfportraits [young & old], and a portrait of an old man)

After checking all the floors and rooms, we were exhausted. Abdallah wanted to check the “Bar” and the terrace. We took some nice pictures of Palazzio Vecchio and had two Espressos and prepared to leave.

We walked back to where we started still admiring the artwork while trying to find the “Uscita” (Exit). But you couldn’t go out the same way you get in. Instead, we had to walk all the way back to the second corridor… Getting out of the museum, however was not going to be that easy. We went down to the seond floor (Abdallah thought that floor was deserted because the windows were all shut from the outside). There we were lead through a maze of more artwork. We found Caravagio’s Medusa shield there for example. We were out of time, so we had to rush out. But after 15 minutes we were still there!

The ground floor wasn’t easier to get out of either. Every time you think you found an exit there would be yet another sign telling you to go to the next room. We went through a maze of gift shops, bookshops, etc, until finally there was the exit taking us to a backstreet somewhere in the center of Firenze.

Here are some photos taken from the Piazza Della Signoria, near the Uffizi Palace.

Do we really live under the same sky? That’s what I kept asking my husband since we came here!

It’s really amazing how different the sky looks in Italy. It’s huge, vast, enormous… amazingly beautiful!
Lebanon is surrounded by the Mediterranean from the west, a series of mountains from the east… so the sky is always bound no matter where you look. Here it’s different, wide spaces with mountains in the far horizon and plains extending as if forever. Maybe that’s why the sky looks larger (to me at least)!

Here are some photos with beautiful Italian skies
I should take a few more to show you what I mean.