Day 3 Tuscany

We began our day at 6:20 this morning by driving about an hour to the Tuscan coast arriving in time to see the sun rise. 

Our guide Paolo (right) is on a mission to protect the marine life along the coast. He has always battled against the damaging trawler fishermen and is an activist for sustainable fishing. 

Bringing the Italian sea back to life is the title of this article.  39 huge stone sculptures were positioned on the sea floor off the coast of Tuscany. The idea was that the huge sculptures would snag the nets of the illegal trawlers that were targeting the area and destroying the sea life. Local fishermen say that now, 6 yrs after the start of the project, it is working. Populations of fish and crustaceans are recovering after years of decline. A pod of dolphins is now calling it home and lobsters have returned after not being seen in the area for over 35 years. It has been such a success that Paolo plans to install up to 100 sculptures up the coast. One young artist out of London contributed two 20 ton sculptures to the project. Paolo has been written up in magazines and journals all over the world and is quite proud of himself and his work.

The rest of our group went out last night for more wine and food and they are moving a little slowly today. 

Our group with Paolo. 

Heading up the coast on the Mediterranean Sea. 

Me getting instructions on where to steer the boat. 

Then Kim took over.

Pulling in the nets. 

Squid 

And another squid with lots of squid ink. 

Tiny sea urchin

This is a crossbow fish. 

Still pulling in the nets

Not sure what he called this fish but it looks like it could fly. 

And that’s all the fish. Paolo was quite disappointed. 

Cruising along the beautiful Maremma National Park. 

There are some palm trees just above and to the right of the crevice in the rock. They are centuries old but haven’t grown very big because there is no soil; growing only in the rock. 

Kim swimming in the sea. 

Letting the nets back out. The net is ~1 1/2 km long and 4 meters wide. 

Quite a pile of net. It weighs almost 1,000 kilos. 

Cleaning the nominal catch. 

Squid eye. 🤮 Apparently it’s a delicacy. 

The captain saw a tuna jumping so grabbed his rod and reel to drop in the water. He handed it to Kim to hold. Alas, no tuna jumped on 🤣. 

And we returned to shore after about 5 hours at sea. 

A young couple (far right) also on the boat decided to photo bomb us. 

Shortly we will head back to the “bird house” to make gnocchi, which we are supposed to eat with our catch of the day. Not sure what that will be. Hopefully not squid eyes 😬. 

We had a little bit of a rain this afternoon. Didn’t last long and we had all gotten back to our apartments so the timing was good. 

Figs

We took a walk around town and came across these old Italian men playing cards outside. I snuck a photo. They were hilarious. 

Our class for this evening is potato gnocchi. This is our set up. 

My gnocchi 

Kims. 

Can you imagine having a place like this to sit your gnocchi or pasta to dry?

After getting the gnocchi made, it was another break for us

While chef Oli cooked. 

This is our gnocchi with a prawn sauce. Oh my. It was delicious!

The patio where we cook and eat. 

And here is the fish we caught today. No squid in sight. Yay!!!

This is roasted fennel. It really tasted like sautéed apples. We also had greens which I don’t seem to have a picture of 🤷‍♀️  

For dessert we had peach panna cotta with peaches from their peach tree of course. 

These are truffles that we will be using in one of the dishes we cook later. 

We walk under the grape arbor to get to and from the van. Oli said about 4 days ago the entire arbor looked like this picture. It was completely loaded with grapes. 

We’ll be out early again tomorrow so it’s off to bed for me. Ciao!