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Thursday, 15th February 2007

Italy: Art and ice cream

Paul Ogden

TUSCANY: Breathtaking

FLORENCE is one huge art gallery. Famous landmarks, quaint side streets, awesome squares and forgotten alleyways all add a little or a lot to this unparalleled display of Renaissance Italy.

The 21st Century is unapologetically graphed on to the 15th, but even the incessant buzz of mopeds and endless shuffle of tourists cannot mask the magnificence of the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, and Piazza della Signoria.

Unless you have two or three days to spend here, try to avoid the bottomless treasure trove that is the Uffizi art gallery and its equally monumental queues and head round the corner to an undervalued home of sculpture, the Museo del Bargello. Here early Michelangelos rub bronze shoulders with a delicate Donatello or two, without you rubbing shoulders with anyone.

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And it is also virtually next door to the most brilliant, and busiest, gelateria on the planet - Vivoli.

This is Italian ice cream at its most expensive - you can easily spend about £5 on a medium tub - but at its rich, fruity, quirky best.

However, the great thing about our long, wonderful day in Florence was escaping back to our mobile home in the countryside of Tuscany, on a site in the tranquil Arno valley, about half-an-hour south of the city.

Expansive

The expansive Norcenni Girasole Club site outside Figline is on the edge of Chianti country and about an hour away from that other must-see Italian city of Siena.

It is also an hour and a bit from Pisa, where we flew into and hired a car for our week.

Norcenni Girasole is a huge site, with lots of facilities, including great pools, tennis and football courts, shops, restaurants, a gym and sauna, and children's entertainment in high season. It was clean, green, lively and friendly.

There are a number of caravan operators, but our Vacansoleil mobile home was at the newer, classier end at the top of the site, the Villaggio, next to the better pools, magnificent, addictive waterslide and best restaurant. The local Italians queue up to eat there at weekends (what higher recommendation of the cuisine do you need) and enjoy the enviable views from the terrace over the hazy, verdant Pratomagno mountains.

There's not a great deal of space outside your mobile home, just enough to swing a barbeque after the car is neatly tucked away, but there is a garden table with six chairs, a couple of sun loungers and a tasteful gazebo bedecked with flowering climbers to offer some privacy.

The Vacansoleil caravans themselves are a high standard, too. TV, shower and air conditioning (more necessary than you would imagine, even in May) come as standard and their Fiji 2 mobile homes have more than enough room for a family of four, especially if you plan to eat al fresco as much as possible.

The site is in a great location. In classic Tuscan countryside but near the high-speed highways to those culture-crammed cities, it is also on the edge of Chianti country where high-rollers in Maseratis vie for road space on the winding roads with hay-toting tractors.

You really need a hire car so you can weave your way through the scenic villages and well-heeled towns dotted among the gentle hills and soak up the panoramas across the vineyards and villas.

Fantastic

The nearest Il Chianti town to us was Greve, with its triangular square, thriving restaurants and expensive shops. It has a fantastic, though small, wine museum, Le Cantine, which outlines the history of the famous Chianti tipples sold under the Black Cockerel symbol.

There you can pay to sample some of the hundreds of wines from the surrounding area. Ever fancied a taste of a bottle costing 100 quid? Pay a couple of euro for a glug and see what you've been missing. The same goes for olive oil. Dip some bread in the many varieties and you'll be amazed how different they are.

It was in the winding Chianti country that our NeverLost sat nav system in our Hertz hire car came into its own. Indeed, as we parked up at one small Tuscan town an American in the next bay sighed to his driving companion: "You sure could do with GPS in this country!" I smiled.

That town was the extraordinary, medieval hilltop centre of San Gimignano. In the 13th century, wealthy families vied with each other to build the tallest towers and there are 13, each a mecca to tourists.

Take the rickety stairs to the top, hold on to your kids, and marvel at the views.

And the coach party hoards vanish if you dip out of the squares and follow the narrow, well-worn, flowery footpath around the lizard-covered walls around the town.

For more information, please select the links below.