faraway fara

I was looking to get some new leather boots. My old ones served me well but were not holding up for the move. Lucky for me Santa Croce sull’Arno, aka the leather district, is only an hour and a half away from where we live. We also wanted some tall glasses and Empoli, a city famous for green glass, is 20 minutes from Santa Croce sull’Arno! So I planned a fun day trip that we would finish off with a wine tasting in Chianti.

*Spoiler: most of this did not go as planned. I ended up getting my boots in Pisa on a different day, and we do not currently have tall drinking glasses.

Santa Croce sull’Arno

We got here around 2pm. Most things are closed in Italy between 1 and 4ish. We were hungry and had a great kebab. I was able to use my growing Italian to ask the owner when the rest of the stores open. This is when we learned that pretty much everything in the town closed with Covid. People still lived there but they went out of town to buy things they wanted. The owner of the Kebab shop was planning to open some of the closed stores and bring back a little downtown area over the next few years. He wanted to open everything close together so it would feel like a downtown again. We ate our kebabs by the river and then went on our way since there was no leather to be had.

Empoli

This town is very cute. Our first stop was a glass museum. We saw some cool glass things and learned about the green glass the town was famous for. The most important thing about this museum is that is was the first museum Lila has ever been in!

One of the big reasons I wanted to move to Italy was the ability to bring your dog pretty much everywhere with you. Lila is not a service dog, yet in Italy she can ride the busses and trains, stay in most hotels, go into restaurants, shops, and pretty much anywhere else. Even grocery stores have special carts so you can bring your dog. I think they are meant for little dogs and I haven’t tried to take Lila to the grocery store yet.

Back to Empoli. We finished at the museum and asked where we could buy our own green glass. No where. They don’t really make it anymore, but I can try eBay. I am now zero for two. No leather boots and no glass. We got some gelato and walked around to the town center. The white mint gelato was wonderful. Lila rolled in the grass and we enjoyed the center. When we were leaving we saw some boots! I tried them on and they were not what I wanted. So still no boots. I grabbed a coffee across the street and then we headed to the winery… kind of….

Wine

I sent the winery I planned to Luca and we both realized it was not close. No one wanted to drive another hour and a half to the winery and then another hour and a half home. I was feeling pretty disappointed in the day I planned at this point. We headed home.

On the way home we planned to stop at a local store to get some wine for a lunch we had the next day. Then we remembered this store does wine tastings! It is about a 7 minute drive from our house, 40 minute walk. But keep in mind it takes about 5 minutes to dive up our street.

We went to Vineria Merenderia of Massetti Gabriele and had wine, meats, and cheese. This little shop saved the day!

I didn’t really get any of the items I was hoping to buy, but Lila got to go to her first museum, we got to see some cool towns, and ended the day with wine in our own town.