Old People Eating

To get to Siena for a short break there is a choice to be made. Either fly to Florence and take a one hour train ride, or fly to Pisa and take a longer train ride with a change at Empoli. Neither of us had seen the leaning tower so we went for option two.  Having got off the train we eventually found a taxi to take us to our accommodation for the next two nights; Ca' Bianca. This old house has 14 guest rooms and we had booked one of the two suites available. This was far bigger than we needed with a sitting room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, but it was lovely. The whole place was lovely. Very peacefully set in the beautiful Tuscan countryside. We ate dinner here twice. The first evening we were not too hungry as we had eaten an unexpectedly large and slightly late lunch in Pisa, so we shared a plate of mixed crostini to start. Three were topped with tomato and three with chicken liver. We followed this with, for me, a bowl of Cacio e Pepe and for the lady spaghetti wi...

We arrived in Pisa too late in the evening to get any food and that was a surprise as on previous visits to Italy we had gone out in the evening and found it was too early to get any food! The following day our morning started with a walk towards the Torre Pendente and a stop on the way at this little Cornetteria. Excellent coffee and delicious home-baked pastries. The Italian answer to the French croissant is the cornetto which is not an ice cream flogged by an operatic gondolier. The young man behind the counter was the owner's son and, rightly, he was proud to tell me his father baked all the pastries every day. An excellent start to the day.