Outside Florence

Most Americans come to Firenze (Florence) to see this…..

...the Ponte Vecchio...

...or the world-class art in the Uffizzi…

Botticelli’s Primavera…Roger’s absolute favorite.

But not Carol and Roger.  We never got within a mile of the historic downtown.

Nope.  We came to see Vincenzo Alongi.  

He’s Roger’s good buddy.  He took Roger to the park to play…twice.

Vincenzo’s a connoisseur of good gelato. He picked out the four best flavors on the face of the earth (Amarena, Fondente, Pistaccio, and Frutti di Bosco…in case you were curious). 

Vincenzo had a baby sister not long ago, so we had to come and meet Costanza, too.

Vincenzo is the grandson of our friends Linda Brill and Jim LaLonde…who had the good fortune to be in Firenze at the same time we were.

Vincenzo’s parents Brett LaLonde and Piero Alongi live in a tiny apartment in a suburb of Firenze.  It was tight quarters with just the two of them, and now with two children it’s even more cramped.

So Brett and Piero bought this 150 year-old farmhouse in a rural area surprisingly close to their jobs downtown.  It needs a lot of work, but Piero’s an architect, so he now has another full-time project to go along with his day job.

Is it worth it?

This is the view from their back yard.

On top of that, they have acres of olive trees that can produce some of the world’s best olive oil.

While in Firenze, Roger got to fulfill a life-long fantasy.  He purchased a Pinarello Prince bicycle.

For those of you not in the know, Pinarello is to bicycles what Ferrari is to automobiles…though the model Roger’s getting is more like a mini-van than a Formula-1 race car.  

Sergio (in the picture at the left) will measure Roger and fit him to the bike in June, then send the specs to the Pinarello factory in Treviso, where they will build the custom-fit, carbon-fiber bike of Roger’s dreams. We will pick it up when we return in the Fall.

What a way to squander the children’s inheritance!

The grape vines we just starting to leaf-out, so decided to leave Firenze not by the main highway, but rather wander down the Chianti Road.

First stop: Greve in Chianti, with the prettiest piazza of the five towns.

Then Castellina in Chianti, (which means “little castle”).  That’s Carol at the foot of the castle stairs.  Not so little, huh?

Then on to Radda in Chianti…the most famous (and expensive) of the towns on the Chianti Road.

We had to skip Gaole in Chianti.  We had lingered too long and ran out of time.

The last town on the Chianti Road was Castelnuova Berardengena.

This town has grown incredibly since we first visited.  Too much traffic to try and make it into the Centro Storico.

Then a not-so-quick stop at a Iper-Coop, to stock up on groceries.

And finally:

Home at last!