Mugello Valley

12th - 18th November
This was spent in the Mugello area, just north of Florence. We had initially stopped to try and get online at a McDonalds but some time now we had not been able to (hence the lack of updates!). In Italy you need an Italian sim card and phone number to register and use the free wifi and although we had managed to do this before, now it wasn't letting us on. No message, just no access. Still, we found an incredibly friendly Tourist Info office who gave us a lot of info on the area including info about the local Library which offers free wifi if you register - bonus!

The main towns we visited in this area of Tuscany were Barberino Di Mugello, Borgo San Lorenzo, Scarperia and some excursions into the smaller hamlets dotted around the surrounding hillsides where we went in search of preserves and cheeses and went on some amazing walks in some beautiful scenery. These towns are quaint rural working towns, and yet again everyone we spoke to was more than friendly and if they could speak English loved to tell us what they loved about England and the English, if not we still did our best with pigeon Italian and loads of gestures, smiles and nods. It's great fun.

We found a great little co-operative supermarket which makes cheese and other produce from the farmers around Vecchio and it's environs. We, of course, sampled a selection and they were quite happy to ply us with cheese and other tasters such as mice-pie style cakes, but with apricot filling and the pastry was made with ricotta cheese! Delicious. The cheeses themselves are worth a mention as they have won numerous prizes and you can taste why. We also picked up some Chiannini steak which, from the local Chiannini cows, again, is all local. In fact, very little that we have found in Italy is not local! We also did our homework on Olive oils (with the help of more of the locals) who told us that cold-pressed olive oil produces a better quality of oil over the machine-pressed (we saw the machine-pressed method the other day) and also where to buy from to get a good deal. Also that usually cold-pressed is used for salads while machine-pressed, being slightly cheaper is used for cooking.

Over the next couple of days we hope to head to Bologna - the foody capital of the world, so I'm told :-)