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Archive for the ‘Italian Culture’ Category

The panorama hasn’t changed in centuries, but developments on-top of Florence’s favourite panorama have left local residents with, shall we say, a salty taste in the mouth, or as Italian’s say “aqua in bocca” (water in the mouth, i.e. speechless).

As usual the thing that is bringing pain to the community has been the requalification of the main piazza, that while looking much better than before (it will look amazing in tourist guides, brochures etc…) has effectively driven a stake in the heart of local businesses. Let’s make one thing clear, Fiesole, was always expensive and everyone knew that already -taking a cocktail on Park Lane in London, and Dalston in Hackney will call for different reserves of money.

But whereas before, there was the idea that if you wanted to get out of your car and take a look around Fiesole this was a possibility, now, that’s pretty much over. There is simply nowhere to park. The result are businesses are closing down and the premiums that you used to pay for a coffee can no be longer offset by the pleasures of quaint browsing around the local shops, because they are disappearing fast.

All of this is more of relevance to those people that are living in Florence, and so a comment on local trends, as a tourist you can pretty much overlook these facts, that’s unless you intend to visit Fiesole in a car. The best advice for visiting Fiesole is to take the bus from the central station in Florence, which will deliver you to the main Piazza in the town is around 25 minutes, and cost around a Euro.

If you’re thinking about taking a holiday in Tuscany, in a Tuscany with a pool then take a peek on the Tuscany Vilas website, which has recently added a properties service to.

Last night on television a very popular programme was being shown. Superquark is hosted by the UK’s equivalent of our David Attenborough, the mighty Piero Angela. It’s a very comfortable programme; the studio into which you are invited has a living room feel with the decadence the setting from the 1960 George Pal film, The Time Machine.  It’s very easy watching, and they tend to let an excerpt from documentary roll, and then return to the studio for a discussion about it.

The point of this post has to do with health. One of the polls they ran last night was on how many litres of water a person should drink every day. Most of the people that were questioned in the street responded that they drank at least 1.5 litres of water every day. Even if the actual statistics presented by an expert afterwards suggested that the amount of water consumed by Italians was, on average, half, it did make me think….If we did the same poll in the UK what would the response be.

Could the secret to a long life of Italians be because they drink a lot of water? I don’t know, but I do know that in the UK people prefer something fizzy or enhanced over something naturally pure, and I think this would be a positive leaf that us Brits could take out of their book.

I know there must be some truth to what I am saying because whenever I return to the UK the only water I can get in a bottle consistently is Volvic, which if you’ve ever drank at room temperature, tastes foul – you might as well be drinking plastic.

By contrast, go to an Italian supermarket and you’ll find a water offering of at least 15-20 different brands. Now it’s also true that we drink a lot of water over here because our tap water tastes like a swimming pool, but I still think there is a key message here:

Give water a big vote of confidence..and if you want the best…there is only Levissima in my book!