Day 32 - Greve in Chianti

Greve is considered the unofficial capital of the Chianti region and this afternoon we took a leisurely ride into the city to explore. It is about 20 kilometres from our Villa. Like almost all Italian cities it has a rather large Piazza at its core where there are porticos lined with small shops and I'm sure on some days a local market as well. Not today mind you but I can just imagine the local farmers setting up in the square to sell their fresh goods. I'm sure Greve is no different from any other Italian city with it's Piazza buzzing with locals on market day.

Now most of the shops I didn't care for per se since they were the standard tourist trap places selling crap although there were fewer of these in this Piazza than most others we have visited. The odd one had some more local goods as well as arts and crafts and of course there were a few places to sit and eat or to enjoy an espresso. You can spend hours in Italy sitting in little piazza's drinking espresso.

For a photographer these piazza's never let you down with interesting views and shapes and sizes to capture and there is always at least one shop that is worth taking a lot of pictures in. In Greve it was a rather large shop that sold wince, Prociutto, cheeses and a very wide variety of various salami's. I bought a salami made from Chinghiale which is wild boar. Not too gamey and rather nice to just chomp on without anything else. I took a lot of pictures in this store which you can see quite fascinated me with the way they had everything hanging from the ceiling and stuffed Chinghiale at every turn. Mean looking suckers if you ask me. I wouldn't want to run across one of these during a lazy walk in the woods. They are much better faced with a shotgun in your hand and even then I'm not sure I would like to tangle with one of these beasts!

 By the way if you go back to some of the pictures in earlier blogs you can see a huge forested area across the valley from our Villa right next to the vineyards. It is massive and there apparently is quite a bit of wild boar still roaming around in these bushes. It is hunting season for wild boar and pheasant and each morning you can hear the dogs and the guns a blazing.

Till Tomorrow when we head back to Florence. I plan to spend some time inside some of the Duomo's ... (churches) and will get some good photo's to post.

Ciao.