Arezzo

Veronica wanted to go out to some of the outlets near Florence.  I was more than happy to go for a bit of a trip outside the city so I rented a car for the day.  With so much time and the benefit of a car, we decided to go a bit further and to visit one of the nearby towns.  I looked at the maps and worked out that the town of Arezzo was only an hour away.  It worked out quite well too.  We would go to Arezzo and then track back to the outlets which would be on the way back to Florence.  We woke up early and took a taxi out to the airport car rental.  I was getting more flashbacks to my last trip to Florence when I also came here to rent a car for my first road trip in Italy.  I dismissed these thoughts from my head as memories of a different life.

The car rental process was easy enough until we reached the boom gate to exit the car park.  The girl working behind the counter had forgotten to give me a pass to exit and so we were stuck trying to figure out a way to leave until a random worker with a pass walked by and swiped us out.  The drive to Arezzo should have been straight forward, yet we were somehow caught in a near full stop traffic jam on the highway.  It was a confusing traffic jam that seemed to have no cause.  Initially I thought that it was caused by roadworks, but after about 40 minutes of waiting, we finally began moving at speed and seemed to pass nothing that would have caused such a delay.  The only possible explanation I could think of was that there had been a breakdown that had been fixed.

We reached the town of Arezzo a bit later than expected.  I had done my research online and parked at the bottom of the town just outside of the old town.  There was a series of covered escalators that took us all the way into the centre which was very convenient.  Within about fifteen minutes, we were standing in the famous town square of this old medieval town.

Like many other places in Italy, it was a beautiful town.  What was a bit different was that it was "older".  Most other places we went seemed to have a style and architecture that was largely created during the renaissance.  Even Rome, for all of its lovely old Roman ruins has most of these spots surrounded by the elegant buildings of the renaissance that came far later.  Arezzo was a bit different as the town had maintained a look and feel from the middle ages. 

These extra few hundred years made a big difference with the look and feel of the place.  It didn't have the grand and refined style of the other places we had been, but instead everything felt a bit more quaint and rustic.  Most of these places we had visited were still quite touristic in their look and appearance, but this old middle ages feel seemed to make that tourist town vibe even stronger than normal.  At times, it did seem to make the place appear a bit like medieval theme park.  I was half expecting to see actors in faux knight armour appear to start jousting and fighting.

There were no knights to be found, but in their place there were children everywhere.  One of the kids had a small drum with him, and everywhere the family went we could hear the drum beating.  The town was small, so we could work out roughly where the family had decided to walk just from the location of the sound.

We found a nice spot near the main square and had lunch.  The food was rich and hearty.  Stewed beef in red wine, accompanied by the strangely tasteless Tuscan bread.  We were enjoying the food in Tuscany, but it didn't suit the weather.  With the warmth of summer, the heartiness of all the food we had been eating was a bit out of place.  Future visits to Tuscany should probably come in Autumn or during other cooler times.  The middle of summer didn't seem to be the best time to be indulging in such heavy fare.

After lunch, we slowly made our way back to the car.  The car park was located at the bottom of a series of escalators that took people quickly up and down to the city centre.  We both joked that it felt like we had found an Italian version of Hong Kong's Mid Level escalators.  Veronica was excited, as we got into the car and sped off towards the true highlight for her of this day's trip, the outlets.