San Gimignano

San Gimignano is a small town an hour south of Florence that is mostly known for all its towers. The families of the town went a bit crazy and buildt towers to prove how rich they were, the higher the richer. They now have 25 towers still standing, nothing ever ends in Italy. Victoria came with us to se this strange town.

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I couldn’t get enough of the landscape.

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Freshly clipped olive grove.

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I love flowers on a bare branch.

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Every town in Italy is placed on a hill.

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In the back you see the old town.

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First coffee of the day.

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I liked San Gimignano mostly because it looked like people actually lived there.

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The biggest alperose (English name?) I have ever seen.

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Door hammers were serious business.

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Towers and stairs

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Towering over me 😉

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A very old door.

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Town hill.

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This was the venue of our second lunch. The first one was not good enough to photograph, but this place was wonderful. Not only did they have flowers on every wall, but also the best bruscetta in the world.

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Italians do simple food, bread and olive oil. I could have lived my whole life eating just that.

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Bruscetta! Which really is just toast with tomatoes, traditionally. They just do it so well.

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Cremona, Parma and Lambrusco

As I did take a lot of pictures in Italy, and nothing else is happening in my life than work, apartment hunting and bad weather, I thought I’d give you a tour of Tuscany and neighbouring country. First out is Cremona and Parma where we spent our first two days.

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We had checked the forecast and brought an umbrella, we used it more than once unfortunately.

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Every town in Italy has one of these, a duomo, this is the one in Cremona.

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Cremona is the home of the Stradivarius violins, and there are still many who make violins there.

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They like marble in Italy

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…and arches

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This is the Lambrusco! It is a very common wine in the north on Italy and used as an everyday wine (as they actually have wine everyday). The nice thing about it is that it is a sparkling red wine (not rosé) and is perfect with simple Italian dishes.

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Parma had some museums

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And no warmth (as you can see). Just after this Erik went back to the car to get his had and gloves.

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The duomo in Parma.

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We wore a lot of clothes in the beginning of the trip. And I totally adore my Nike Free 3.0, they are pretty, they are comfy, they are light and they take no space in your suitcase.

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Very-happy-borg

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They do details wonderfully

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And everybody had these, we have two of them at home too. Erik was very happy (he is the flower master of our house).

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Coloures, balconies, lamp posts 🙂

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The most stylish lady all colour coodinated in navy and brown. She had bought flowers or something for her friend, and the friend sent down a basket to get the present. (Don’t hate me for taking pictures of strangers)

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One of the few pictures of us together, the only bad thing about travelling just the two of us.

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We went and looked in a really cool design shop.

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Oh, and went to the resturant Ida mentioned, to have lunch. As any respectable place they made their own pasta.

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And they had kept old bits and pieces.

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Like a newspaper clipping of the former owner with Marylin Monroe.

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These apartments had colour coordinated flower pots.

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Gnocci with gorgonzola and walnuts. Literally just that, those three ingredients. It was delicious and simple and very Italian.

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Ravioli. And I loved how you could buy a glass, 0.25, 0.50 or a full bottle of wine at restaurants. So you could buy two or three or more glasses, depending on what you felt like that night.

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Then we had icecream (we are Norwegians, temperature is not important when you want icecream) at Emilia. They had two chocolate fountains and superb icecream.

After another stroll through Parma we drove to Firenze. We hadn’t realized that there is a mountain range separating north and middle Italy, but there is. And the combination of showers and three (!!!) accidents made us one hour late on our two hour trip. But we had a magnificent steak for dinner when we finally arrived, so it ended well.

The coolest (coffee) bar

…happens to be in Cremona, Italy. We stopped there by chance the first day on our trip. It was at this precise mmoment we learned that Italians have a well regulated feeding shedule. Breakfast is just a cup of espresso and maybe a piece of cake, lunch is between 12.20 and 15.00, then dinner from 19.00 to 22.00. Which means that it is impossible (at least in small towns) to get anything to eat between 15.00 and 19.00. As long as you have a big plate of pasta of pizza (as we usually did), it is no problem to wait, but you have to remember to find a restaurant before 14.15…

All of this was unknown to us the first day, so we spent a lot of time in this wonderful coffee bar, using his wifi and eating all his cakes.

Back to the bar itself. The bar is really a coffee roaster, you know, they roast their own coffee and then make it on the spot. The design of the place was wonderful, clean and cozy. Have a look:

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Holiday!

Today is he day! Right now we are well on our way to Tuscany in Italy. We are going to visit Victoria in Florence, see the tower in Pisa, look at tons of stones (architecture), nature, grape fields, eat wonderful Italian food, drink wine and drive around. Ten days of pure bliss <3

Internet gave me some nice pictures to illustrate 😉

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Road trip!

Good news! Erik and I are going to Italy on a road trip this Easter 🙂 We have now even bought the tickets, so now it is definitely happening. I can’t wait to go. There is nothing better that travelling with Erik and I am looking forward to spending ten days in romantic Tuscany with him. There will probably be a lot of what we did when we went to Uppsala for my interview in September last year.

Uppsala:

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The church from the river

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Beers by the river

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Mmmm, berries and mushrooms.

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Skipping and dancing

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By the fort

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The entrance to the botanical garden

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Benches for giants

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Carl von Linné was at Uppsala when he invented the scientific system of ordering organisms

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Insection of the plants

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Happy, lunching in the sun

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The fashion brand Acne has collaborated with Uppsala University to make t-shirts! (but I was too poor to buy one)

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The front of the church

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Bulle! (cinnamon roll, Swedish style) Just as big as Eriks’ face

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The tea cup is dwarfed by it

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