the train ride to chiusi was uneventful. I drifted in and out of sleep, dreaming and daydreaming about the inefficiencies of rome (of a city of 3 million, there are only two subway lines, none of which cross the city core?? and what is this with trains not leaving from posted platforms????).
and then we arrived... at the first sights of the tuscan landscape, my heart softened. my eyes couldn't drink in the beauty around me fast enough. my head swiveled back and forth and around and around, trying to capture in every sight, the soft rolling hills, the million shades of green, the majestic trees: cypress, olive, pine, walnut, the charming villas and hilltop towns...
we went up a windy road, lined with the cypress tress so quintessential to tuscan landcapes. “how do you” they seemed to whisper, welcoming me to their home. we were finally arriving at our reason for being in italy: artist in italy, my week long watercolour course in tuscany.
artist in italy is run by julian and mandy, a british couple who (so courageously) picked up their family and moved to italy a few years ago. they bought a villa called siliano alto, an old honest country house. the downstairs of the house has been renovated to accommodate guests. there are two wings: one in the front, one in the back; each wing consists of a fully equipped kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms and their own private bathrooms. daniel and I stayed in one of the bedrooms in the back, a two hundred and fifty year old bedroom (oh sigh) with a door and window overlooking rolling hills and distant mountains.
however charming, an old house does come with its quirks. sunlight streaming in warmed the room during the day, but temperatures would drop with the sun. it would take so much courage to leave the hot shower every night. there were also bugs, lots of it, and every day, daniel would have to rinse the bathtub of creepy crawlies before I was willing to hop in. rolf, the artist in the other bedroom in our wing, had so many ants in his bedroom one night, his bed was moving.
siliano, perched on a small hill, is on an estate called “Le Coste”, 1,500 acres of unspoiled nature. the estate is home to a variety of animals, which I did not have the privilege of seeing, but you can hear birds’ songs every moment of the day. my favourite (because I could recognize it), the soft, resonant "hoo-hoo hoo-hoo” of the hoopoe bird.
julian and mandy run the art courses from their own home. julian teaches and mandy cooks. on nice sunny days, their daughters can be found playing in their treehouse in the front yard. tufo (short for tartufo—truffles in Italian) is the family dog and spends most of his days with the guests, begging for good with his adorable brown eyes.
the evening we arrived was low key. daniel and I settled into our room and then met the other guests- 2 american, 1 australian, and 1 swede- for dinner in the house’s studio. dinner started off with bruschetta. I learned that bruschetta doesn’t just mean tomatoes on bread in italy; bruschetta is simply the toasted bread and can come with a variety of toppings. that night we had bruschetta with two different spreads: mascarpone cheese and truffles. It was the first time daniel and I had truffles and boy, we’ve been missing out in the last twenty-something years of our life. the rest of dinner, a roasted fennel risotto, was also divine.
tired from a day of travelling, all the guests called it an early night. I went to sleep, snuggled close to my husband (trying to steal his heat), feeling like the luckiest girl alive. the place, the environment, the experience was a dream coming true and I knew with all my heart that so much good was to come from my week in tuscany.
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