Coffee Chronicles Part ...whatever. Remembering the numbers is too much like work.

Livorno. We took a tour of Tuscany stopping at a few villages along the way. Every village seems to be a fortified or walled town. Outside of the wall there is rolling hills covered with grape fields and olive groves. At one of these villages named San Gimignano we sat in the plaza and had our coffee. This was an extremely busy ancient village of high walls, narrow streets and shops offering all sorts of Italian wares. Most of the shops sell leather or ceramics in the local style and there were also many places to buy wine, cheese, pastries and prosciutto. The cappuccino was excellent but the service was slow. But there were bus loads of tourists filling the cafes and squares, the service was slow because they were overrun. Linda had a Latte Macchiato which came in a tall glass mug and was rivalled in looks by how smooth it tasted. Linda was happy, I was happy, no complaints here today.
Throughout the region there were many cyclists riding for recreation or for touring, more than we've seen in any other area so far. The area was hilly but like I said above, the hills were rolling and would have made a good ride. The roads were also a little wider than most we've seen, at least when we weren't in the villages which were basically forts. The traffic was also a little more relaxed and seemed to give cyclists the room necessary to keep them from being driven off the road. I could ride here happily all day.
Later in the day we had a winery tour at a small family estate. Very small winery, they didn't have any stainless steel vats, they didn't even buy their own barrels new, but they did make excellent wine. And Rose, and Grappa, and prosciutto, and grew their own melons, all of which we were able to sample well beyond what could possibly be called “tasting”. We didn't care how much behind schedule we were after that, at least I wasn't anyway. On to Pisa to hold up the leaning tower. We were there for only 5 minutes then had to bolt for the boat. Our trusty driver Angelo got us there with minutes to spare. Thanks Angelo! And thank you Italy. We are in France tomorrow.