Everyone Can Can! Part 1 - Strawberries!

One of the joys of tending a garden is having a surplus of veggies and being able to can them. Typically I end up with a few cans of pickles each year and leave it at that but this year I was introduced to Strawberry Day and Peach Day at the farmers market and decided to expand my canning horizons! I'd never tried this before because for some weird reason I felt like I needed to grow anything I preserved. I'm glad I gave up on that bizarre requirement this year. When Kim told me about Strawberry Day at the farmers market I had grandiose dreams of strawberry jams and preserves! And so it all started with $20 and a flat of strawberries. 

First thing was first, I cleaned and picked through my haul to remove all the bruised and rotting fruit. Then I dried them before chopping and freezing the berries. I decided to freeze them instead of processing them right away because I was too  busy to can at the time. If I remember right we'd just started tearing down the deck or something like that. Either way, in the freezer they stayed until I had time to process them, which ended up being about 2 months. Freezing the berries had the wonderful side effect of softening them. Which made boiling them down much faster! 

What made this canning spree much more fun was that I had company this time! Kim had never canned before and I was going to "teach" her. What really ended up happening is we both learned how to process fruit and I just showed her how to properly sanitize and then process glass jars. 

The evening started with lots and lots of mushy strawberries (fresh from the freezer). 

 Key canning equipment here: A stock pot (or canning pot) with a canning rack inside it, large sauce pan for fruit boiling (two of the recipes called for Strawberry Puree), small sauce pan for lid prepping and medium sized lid for caramel making (one of the recipes was Strawberry Caramel). Not an eye was spared on the stove this day. We used them all with gusto! All canning recipes will be linked at the bottom for your canning pleasure!

Don't forget to wash your jars before you sanitize them...yeah I don't exactly know why either but do it anyways. After you've washed them throw them right into the water while it's warming up. You may break the glass if you try to put them in the boiling water instead of warming them up *with* the water (I forgot this at least 3 times in a row). 

Next we boiled and mashed (with a potato masher) the strawberries and sugar (because we ignored the recipe and added the sugar first) until they appeared broken down. Sort of like mashed potatoes but much soupier and more like mashed strawberries. 

 Then we strained the strawberry mash through a metal screen to remove the skin and seeds. 

The products of this step are an incredibly gross looking paste. 

 And a delicious looking (and tasting) strawberry puree. 

Set aside your strawberry puree and pull those jars out of the water. 

 Fill the jars to about a half inch head space, place the activated lids on each jar and loosely tighten the bands. Go ahead and throw them back in your hot water (it's OK if you see air bubbles escaping) and make sure you have enough water to completely cover your jars. Process according to the recipe (which in this case was 15 mins). 

 Once the cans have finished processing, remove them from the water bath and place them on a rack to cool. 

 They looked so pretty! In hindsight we wished we'd used the smaller jelly jars for this recipe to make it easier to use before spoiling. 

Our next recipe was Strawberry Caramel! Neither of us had a clue what we were getting ourselves into with this one. It starts of simple. Simple syrup that is. 

You keep boiling and stirring this syrup until it begins to darken. Then you add the strawberry puree to hot syrup and continue to stir. The recipe will tell you that "the syrup with begin to spit and appear to seize. So take care". Ex...excuse me? Hell yeah it seized! It turned into what looked like rock candy in about 10 seconds flat! Take care?!?! What does that mean? Will it unseize?! 

Yes...yes it does. A few more minutes of stirring the rock candy and the sugars dissolved again. So take care...

The recipe calls for a few more minutes of boiling to thicken up the caramel (or what appears to be blood). Like before, we were wishing we had the smaller jars for this recipe too so we wouldn't have to use all the caramel sauce at once. We processed this a little longer than normal just to be sure it was safe. Then set it aside with the purees. 

Since the making of this strawberry caramel was nothing but hot boiling liquid, we hadn't had a chance to see what it tasted like until the remnant had cooled off in the pot. It was the most delicious, strawberry syrup we'd ever tried. This would be amazing on pancakes, cakes, ice cream, other fruit, a spoon even!   

In an effort to not be wasteful, we pressed out the strawberry paste from making the puree into a couple glass pans and dried it in the oven at 200 degrees for several hours (4+ I believe). The product was delicious home made fruit leather.

To wrap up the night, after we'd finished cleaning our mess, we topped a couple scoops of vanilla ice cream with the left over strawberry puree. It was so good it was practically sinful. 

We ran out of time that night so we saved the peaches for another night and another blog post! 

Recipes:

Strawberry Puree

Strawberry Caramel

-Liz

Adventures in trees, trails and trucks

I've always been a hiker. I grew up in the woods, it would seem, and I'm rather comfortable in a dense forest. That's why when Steven and I went on our first backpacking trip for our 2 year anniversary, I was hooked. I'd enjoyed the trails of Shining Rock Wilderness and Wilson Creek Wilderness but I'd been dreaming of a chance to hike in Joyce Kilmer Wilderness. Why? You ask. It's simple. 

Big. F-in. Trees. 

Joyce Kilmer is home to the last old growth forest in the state! Now populated by massive Poplars, it was once home to towering chestnuts as well. Oh that would have been a site. Kim and I  had been dreaming up this two night backpacking trip for months (about 6 actually). We had planned for a trip in March but pushed it off a month because of the cold. By the time our rescheduled weekend came around, we were giddy. 

Our itinerary was this: 

Thursday night - drive to Asheville and stay in a hotel room. 

Friday morning - eat a free breakfast and get on the road by 8 (arriving to the trailhead at 10)

Friday - Hike in on Naked Ground Gap Trail from the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest (after doing a loop in the memorial forest)

Saturday - Wake up, have breakfast, leave the camp behind and hike over to Bob Stratton Bald. Around lunch on Saturday we'd be back to the campsite, pack up and haul our gear to Hangover and then Deep Creek Trail

Saturday night - Camp down Deep Creek Trail

Sunday morning - Pack up and head out on Deep Creek Trail to the second car we parked at the trailhead. 

Sunday afternoon - Rejoice with pizza and beer. 

It went down very differently. 

But let me start at the beginning. 

Friday morning, Masi got her stomach stretches in. Little did she know, she was about to become the greatest trail dog ever. 

We were slow to get out of the hotel and didn't head to Joyce Kilmer until around 11. Which meant we didn't get to the memorial forest till about 1. This set us way back but we had to get a loop of the memorial forest in. 

I almost forgot to mention my trail buddies were Blake, Kim and Lego Hamlin! Kim and I had been dreaming this up but she managed to inspire her husband to come along with us.

There I was, moseying around the memorial forest, minding my own business when BOOM, massive tree.

That wasn't even the biggest. This is the big daddy (Masi for scale). I have never been more impressed with trees in my life. You think you've seen large trees before but never like this. With massive trunks, branches that soared to the skies and massive roots that were mazes of strength and nourishment.

Tree selfie!

Yep I did the thing with the two trees that everyone else does. 

After about an hour we wrapped up the memorial forest loop and prepped for the hike. At this point I should mention that the weather was turning on us. We were hoping for two awesome days in the woods but the weather was supposed to turn Friday night and be miserable Saturday and Sunday. For that reason we decided to skip parking the second car at the other trailhead and just hike up and out the same trail for only one night. 

Before I get to that, I have a funny story. I have a few essentials for backpacking: sleeping bag, tent, food, water and wine. I had a bottle of Moscato that I needed to open and pour into my nalgene, however I did not have a wine tool. I did what any other smart person would do, I shoved a knife in the cork. It was going well until the cork slipped and I geysered red wine all over myself, the back of my car and by some great feat, the SUV parked next to me. Hysterical laughing ensued. 

After the great wine explosion of 2015, we finished packing up, moved the cars to the overnight parking area at the Jenkins Meadow trailhead (down the road from the memorial forest parking lot) and set out. 

Obligatory pre-backpacking picture!

This is the trailhead for Naked Ground Gap trail. It's in the loop for the memorial forest and is currently not marked. Notice big bridge. If you hit that bridge, you've gone too far.

There were flowers everywhere! Trilliums galore and these Lady Slippers too.

Then I rounded a corner and saw this nice fella smiling at me!

The stream crossings were beautiful.

On the Naked Ground Gap Trail there are two trees that almost completely hallowed out and this was the small one. My cheesy grin in this photo was because I was among lots of buzzing things in this picture and really didn't want one of them to land on me. For scale, I'm 5'-1.5". 

The trail was decently maintained. 

Just one foot in front of the other...

The trail went on, and on and on. We kept looking for the first switch back because that heralded the last section of the trail. Finally, there was a final water crossing and a tight switch back! We were close! But then came the hardest section of the trail. I slowly pulled away from Blake and Kim and then left them to rest on a nice slate seat as I powered ahead to find the summit. Masi and I came upon a quasi trail junction that didn't look very well traveled but I waited there anyways to make sure Blake and Kim followed my direction. Little did I know this was about 100 ft from the summit. Once they caught up and I set off again, I saw this. Grass! Grass means summit! Summit means DONE!

We were so thrilled to be at the summit that we didn't quite realize what we had really found. We were bumping around with ours heads down, saying things like, "Ok, that's pretty flat, we could put you here and me there and here's where we'd put a fire" when we collectively turned to face the range and fell silent. Because. Wow. We had found the most amazing view from a camp site that I have ever seen. There was the lake in the corner and the green creeping up the mountain and the blue sky (that my camera phone didn't really capture). I was in awe. 

Because of the impending rain, we set up a tarp right away and set the tents to face it. Me, in my infinite wisdom, set the tarp up like this. This damn thing turned into a massive sail in the middle of the night. The winds that were hallowing up and over the gap were intense and ripped this sucker out of the ground with ease. That was fun to take down at 2 am in the rain. Around this time a couple other hikers rounded the last bend and showed up in the clearing. We invited them to share our fire and they obliged (because it was the most epic fire ring ever and the view was the best from our site). They brought with them Fireball Whiskey and epic stories. Between the 5 of us we had a flask of Fireball Whiskey, a flask of Moonshine, a flask of Jim Beam and a nalgene of Malbec. Priorities, we have them.

Besides the wind and the rain the night was pleasant, and Masi and I slept. I wouldn't say well, but we slept. The morning brought buckets of rain and somehow the 3 of us managed to pack the majority of our gear up inside the tents. At about 8, the rain eased up and we finished packing up our bags to set off again. I...I had no idea how much heavier a wet tent was. Let alone a wet tarp as well. This was a rude awakening. The two hikers that joined us recommended that we hike down the Jenkins Meadow trail instead of hiking back down Naked Ground Gap trail and considering they sounded like they knew what they were talking about, we agreed. It seemed logical since the trail end/began right where we parked the cars. They were taking their time packing up so we said our goodbyes and followed the trail signs toward the Haoe trail which led to Jenkins Meadow. Or...we thought we did.

We all donned our duck sacks and rain coats, preparing for a wet hike. Kim: "Liz that pack is as big as you!" Yes...yes it is...feels like I'm carrying a friggin person too. 

All smiles for day 2. Almost all. 

The trail started off beautiful. We hardly noticed that something was not quite right.

The trail we were looking for was a ridge hike and we should have never, or very briefly at least, gone down hill. The trail we were on went down right away before it flattened out into a quasi ridge. 

We were aiming for a 3.5 mile hike out...but we ended up on the longest, toughest trail in the wilderness, Slickrock. Each one of us independently got the erie feeling that something was just not right and we would stop the group and rethink our decisions so far. "The sign for Haoe pointed this way!" "But we're on a ridge!" "But the trail we got water on was Slickrock and we didn't take that one" "Maybe we accidentally got on this side trail" "There's no way we're on Slickrock..." Oh yeah...it was Slickrock but unfortunately it took us 5 hours to figure that out. 

Fortunately the views from Slickrock were pretty amazing. 

I accidentally startled a momma bird out of her nest on the trail and got to spy on her eggs. The craziest thing is this nest was on the side of the mountain. Not in a tree, but dug into the root masses. 

I remember when we got here we kept saying, "This looks meadow-ish" because the trail we still thought we were on was called Jenkins Meadow. Yeesh. Even though we were lost we got to see some amazing sites. 

At this point the trail started leveling out and we were certain we were nearly at the Jenkins Meadow trailhead (we were still in denial). It wasn't until we continued hiking on this flat trail for another hour that we (and I mean Kim) finally confirmed what we were trying to ignore...we were on Slickrock. A trail marker about 20 mins down the trail confirmed it. Unfortunately Slickrock was the one trail we needed to avoid. It led to the wrong side of the mountain range from our cars and was about 11 miles long. At this point we'd been hiking for around 5.5 hours and we had no idea how we would get back to our cars. Blake and I had mini panic attacks but Kim held it together and found a trailhead that was not too far from us on her map. 

Unfortunately it was straight up the mountain. Don't get me wrong, we were counting our blessings. For one thing it hadn't rained a drop on us since 8am while the forecast had been calling for 100% showers all day long. We also had another nights worth of supplies with us so we could have survived and hiked back out on Sunday. Regardless of this we were hoping against hope that there was a hiker and a car at that trailhead and that they would take us back to our cars. 

We hiked out on Big Fat Gap trail which led to the Big Fat Gap trailhead in the Nantahala forest. It took us about an hour and a half to go a mile. It was painfully slow. Blake and I would walk 20 ft and then stop to catch our breath while Kim dug deep and powered up the mountain. As we neared the crest and we could see the trail head marker, we were thrilled! However, when we finally saw the parking lot was empty we were deflated. 

Another visit to the map to reassess what our situation was. The wind was picking up which heralded the bad weather we'd been lucky to avoid so far. Another night in the parking lot would not have been ideal (considering all my gear was wet) but we could make it. To hike out we would have either needed to follow the road for 10 miles or hike back to Naked Ground Gap on the Haoe-Lead trail and then follow Jenkins Meadow for a total of 6.5 miles. Both of those options sounded horrible. The other option? Get someone to come pick us up. Taxi?! Rangers?! We weren't picky. We all checked our phones...no bars. Not a single one and we were nearly at the top of the mountain. 

My heart sank. Besides wanting to get the hell off the trail, I hadn't been able to get a message to Steven to let him know I was safe. My phone's battery had about 12% left on it and it was dying fast trying to find a signal. Finally, for my last effort, I hike-ran up the Haoe-Lead trail, which summited the mountain next to us, to find a signal. It was maddening, I just kept going up and my phone kept struggling. I'd get a bar, then lose it, I'd try to send a text message and it'd fail. I was nearly in tears when I finally gave up and turned around. At that very second, my phone went off because it had received a text from message Steven.  

"HOLY SHIT" - Actual reaction.

I frantically texted as much information to Steven as quickly as I could before my phone lost signal or battery life. I managed to let him know we were all safe but very much wanted to get off the trail. My phone did eventually die but not before Kim had joined me up there and she managed to give him the remaining information. Steven totally saved the day. He got a hold of the Graham County Sheriff department who contacted their rescue squad. One of the final texts we got from Steven before we went down the mountain and lost signal again, "Go down to the trail head, they're coming to get you". 

Kim and I had mixed emotions of relief and regret. What kind of boob of a hiker quits and calls in the rescue squad even though they have a full nights worth of supplies. Wet or not. But I kept thinking about the beer and pizza waiting for me at Asheville Pizza and Brewery...

It took about a hour for the Graham County Rescue Squad to reach us and when we first caught site of them on the road, I literally jumped up and down for joy. I think I amused them because when they parked the truck three laughing guys came out. Oh well, I've never been known for hiding my emotions well. We were all packed up in the truck and ready to go when they gave us the icing on the cake...a box of apple fritters. These guys rocked. 

The drive down the mountain was a lot shorter than the hike up and it was filled with stories of other hiking groups that have done exactly what we did. Which made us feel far less dumb. 

This last picture pretty much sums up the trip. Kim and I want to go back,  Blake has sworn off Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness for life. 

Now, for the pointers for future hikers. If you've found this blog post because you're considering hiking these trails, let me give you some advice to avoid our mistakes. 

Get on the Naked Ground Gap trail early because you want that camp site. We got lucky that we were the first group on the trail at 1pm but that won't happen normally. 

The water source near Naked Ground Gap is down an offshoot of the Slickrock Trail. When the trail forks, go left and you'll see a stream coming out of the ground about 50 ft down the trail. 

The trail marker at the top of the mountain at Naked Ground Gap is somewhat misleading because trails have been rerouted. The Haoe trail is the one that cuts through all the camp sites. The trail that follows the Haoe arrow marker on the sign, is Slickrock. There is not another trail marker for Slickrock until you're at the bottom. If you find yourself going down, you're on Slickrock, so turn around.

That's pretty much it. My one big pointer, don't get on the Slickrock trail. 

You know I'm a glutton for punishment though because while we were eating our pizza and drinking our beer, Kim and I were already talking about how we can do it again and get it right next time. 

-Liz 

A trip abroad: Lucca, Pisa & the Bistecca Florentina!

Our initial plan for the last day of sightseeing was to drive all the way to Siena. We'd heard some amazing stories about how beautiful the city was and it is known for being a big foodie town. I had plans for Siena, I had restaurant names and everything! However our buddies from the restaurant that had visited Siena before suggested we consider substituting Lucca, a much closer town. Why not?! We said.  

Side note: unfortunately by this point we'd run out of the bottle of airborne and Steven had finally caught my cold. Damn...so close. 

The beauty of Lucca is it was 15 mins from Pisa! Two towns for the price of one! After breakfast, we drove our little Panda down to the coastal town of Pisa and before we knew it we were out of the mountains and into the flatlands. The air became more stagnant and stuffy. It got hot. 

To make things worse, Pisa was batshit crazy. I was so tense trying to find a parking spot that I just took the first lot I could find. It wasn't cheap but it was worth getting out of the damn road. My first impression of Pisa was "holy crap there's a lot of people. And garbage...and cheap tower knockoffs". Once we finally broke through the wall and came into the city we were immediately greeted by the Basilica and the tower.

 The infamous, poorly constructed tower. In front of, to the side of and generally in the way were all the tourists trying to hold the blasted thing up (no, we did not do that)! That's when we started noticing something a little more strange. Yes there were a lot of people in the way but...they were all asian. I'm talking 98% of them. It's as if China took a vacation and went to Pisa by the bus load! 

We did our best to find the road less traveled and ended up in a somewhat crappy botanical garden. I think they should seriously consider firing their gardeners. The majority of the garden beds were barren except for grass or moss but the trees were magnificent. 

There was a magnolia that was being held together with leather and wire that was over 200 years old. I would have gotten a picture of it but it was in an area that was swarming with mosquitos and I was being eaten alive. 

There were also a couple interesting structures in the garden. 

The facade of this building was decorated with tiny pebbles. 

Then there's this thing. I don't know what it's for but it was one of the more interesting things in the garden. Guess that sorta speaks poorly for the garden...

After giving the garden the benefit of the doubt we got the hell out of Pisa (I think we were there for a grand total of 40 minutes). It was just as nerve wracking getting out of Pisa as it was getting in. 

Once we got out of the city and onto the road to Lucca we immediately felt better. It helped that the winding mountain road was a bunch of fun!

Lucca was awesome! It was the perfect combination of old world Italian town and new modernization. It wasn't difficult to find parking right at the wall and the city is very walkable. Unfortunately we didn't have a map and couldn't find one for the longest time. We ended up wandering around aimlessly until we finally found a shop with a map rack. 

That's when I heard one of the strongest southern twangs of my life. Without skipping a beat I approached the lady because of course she's american and looky there, she was holding a map that I would very much like. Me: "Excuse me, ma'am, can you tell me where you found that map? We don't have one and could really use one just like that" Her: "Oooooh Sweeettiiieee, I go this map from my ho-tel" (wow southern twang). Just then Steven appears next to me and he just happens to  be wearing his NC State polo. "Oh my! You went to NC State?! Honey, honey come here, this young man went to NC State! Where are ya'll from?!" "Uh, Raleigh...North Carolina" By then her whole family, husband, daughter, son and daughter in law were gathering to meet Steven and I. The conversation went from NC State to what we do for a living and when I said I worked for SEPI Engineering I got, "Oh my! You work for Sepi?!" "Yes, yes I do. Do you know her?" "Do I know her? I'm on the *insert organization that I'm forgetting* board with her!" I kid you not I ran into a lady in Lucca, Italy that knows my boss's, boss's, boss. 

Small. World. 

Unfortunately, even after all that they couldn't help us find a good map but they did direct us towards the best gelato place in town! It actually ended up being the best gelato I've ever had in Italy. 

Now I want gelato...

The thing to do in Lucca is tour the old buildings and climb the towers. The one that everyone climbs is topped with trees!

But before you get to the trees you have to ascend these rusty metal stairs! I picked a bad day to swear a skirt for one thing. Secondly, if you ever want to test your fear of falling to your death in a big brick tower, walk up bouncy metal stairs with Steven behind you trying his best to make you wee yourself. 

You can't beat the views from the towers though. 

I wasn't all that scared...I swear!

There were actually two towers you can climb in Lucca. Everyone knows about the one with the tree on top but hardly anyone goes to the second. 

In my haste to find out things to do in Lucca I did at least find that so we ascended two towers that day. I thought I had it bad in the first tower...the second tower's stairs were built out of wood with intermittent metal supports....

I took very few pictures up this tower because I legitimately feared for my life. Made worse by the fact that even Steven was spooked. Every few rows of stairs there would be one support that was dangerously loose. By the time we got to the top the last support had completely given way and the last three stairs were barely holding on. That was terrifying but the solid brick platform at the top felt sturdy beneath my feet and I quickly calmed again. 

View of the first tower we climbed from the second one!

Towers all over Lucca

After braving the falling wooden stairs again to get back down we wandered down the quiet streets of Lucca in search of some lunch. 

We somehow found the most delicious pizza we've ever had in Italy. It was spicy and cheesy and greasy and I loved ever morsel of it! It was a little hole in the wall pizza kitchen on Via Fillungo that I can't seem to locate on the map. We ate lunch on the steps of the church San Cristoforo with the rest of the patrons who were mostly locals! 

Like with most Italian cities, churches were everywhere. We wandered into this one. 

I'm so glad we did because, wow. I found the stone arch work and the wood rafters more stunning than most of the duomos I'd been in!

Lucca is known to have an epic market and we enjoyed wandering around it. However I never found anything I wanted to spend too much money on and it was starting to get towards evening so we set off for Montecatini-Terme with no keepsakes of Lucca. 

Before we left we had to climb up on the wall. The neat thing about Lucca, or rather, one of the neat things, is that it is one of the last cities in Italy that has kept its ancient city wall! Most of the cities of Italy have bits and pieces of their wall left but hardly any are intact like Luccas! It wrapped all the way around the city and is used as a greenway! 

The only way in was through access gates like these. So cool. 

 

If you read the last blog post about Montecatini-Alto you'll remember that we promised we'd go back up the mountain for dinner the next night to eat the Bistecca Florentina. This time I remembered to bring along my camera so I could remember the uniqueness of Montecatini-Alto. 

First of all, here's our mode of transportation, the Funicolare! This bad boy traveled up the side of the mountain at some pretty steep angles and was operated by a single cable and some massive gears. It was so much fun to ride. 

Don't ask my why but Steven and I had gotten a song stuck in our heads to the beat of "If you like Pina Coladas". It went something like this, "If you like Funicolare's and getting stuck in the hills" we had a couple more verses but that's the only part I remember (and it's still stuck in my head). By the way getting stuck on the mountain was a real possibility. The last ride down was at 10 pm and if you weren't on it, you were walking down the mountain. 

We rode up the front of the funicolare this time so I could get a picture of the gears as we were winched up the mountain! This totally tickled me. 

Montecatini-Alto was as I had described before, so cute and quaint. The majority of the restaurants were all in one piazza and they all had outdoor seating. They had big lights strung up between the buildings that gave the night a romantic gleam. It's was the stuff of fairy tales. .

(side note, can you play, Spot the Steven in the picture?! Hint: he's sitting at a restaurant on the left.) 

We dined for the second night at La Torre and this time were greeted as old friends. Our server was rather pleased to hear us place an order for the Bistecca Florentina (it was ridiculously expensive), a small appetizer and a glass of wine and mug of beer. I've never been so excited for a piece of meat. 

If ever there was a time when taking a picture of your food was appropriate, it would have been that night. But alas...I could not bring myself to be that kind of tourist. When the steak came out of the kitchen my initial reaction was a mixture of intrigue, hunger and a bit of fear.

This was a big steak. The bone, muscle and fat together were the size of a typical dinner plate...it was 3.5 inches thick. The server gracefully cut three large pieces of meat off the bone, left us a bowl of white beans in olive oil and entreated us to conquer the beast. I have never tasted meat so perfect in my life. It was juicy (they cook it rare), it was flavorful (they only seasoned it with salt and pepper), it was the most tender meat I've ever had. It disappeared rather quickly and I didn't feel like I had just eaten my weight in steak. I pine for this steak. I miss it. Here's the kicker though.,,you can't buy it here. The breed of cow that produces this incredible meat, the Chianina, is only raised in Italy. It's a magnificent old, large breed that produces large, delicious steaks. If anyone figures out how to get the meat in the states. You let me know. You let me know right now. 

After dinner to kill the time before last ride on the funicolare, we wandered around Montecatini Alto and found the ancient fort. 

And a beautiful perspective to take a night's sky picture. The lights below are Montecatini-Terme.

This time on the way back we rode in the front. I wanted to get a picture that really grasped this epic mode of travel.  

"Please keep your hands and feet inside the railing at all times" haha no kidding. 

That evening was a fantastic conclusion to our adventures in Tuscany. We came, we saw, we ate, we conquered.  

The next day we'd be packing up the panda and finding our way back to Milan to fly back to the states. Which meant it was now time to write down more terrible directions. 

Thanks for reading! 

Liz