The best Tuscan hotels

The best Tuscan hotels London - Arabstoday Why is Tuscany so eternally popular? After travelling the length and breadth of Italy for close on thirty years, I think I’m getting close to an answer. In so many other parts of the world, culture is an optional extra, something you do in your spare time. In Tuscany, it’s at the root of everything – though not in an elitist way. A Piero della Francesca fresco exudes the spirit of a region that has long spent its money on beauty and quality. But so does a bowl of ribollita soup, made with seasonal cavolo nero and served with a spiral of just-pressed olive oil. Cultured Tuscan perfection can be found in a fifty-pound bottle of Brunello di Montalcino riserva; but it can equally well be found in one of the region’s many free pleasures, from its painterly landscapes to a soak in an ancient stone basin fed by a hot spring beneath a walled hilltown. Such things are not absent in the rest of Italy, but Tuscany has a unique concentration of them. It also combines fierce pride and care for detail (olive groves that are kept looking spruce even though there’s little money in the crop these days, the strict building regulations that infuriate second-home owners but help to keep Tuscany looking Tuscan) with unpretentious, down-to-earth manners. It has a collection of handsome art-filled, historic towns with more than enough to see, do, eat and drink to fill a long weekend, from Siena to Arezzo, Lucca, Pisa and Cortona. Between villa rentals, grand country house hotels, rural B&Bs and boutique townhouse hotels, it has more great places to stay than porcini mushrooms. And while Italy’s financial woes haven’t (yet) had much impact on the euro-pound exchange rate, if quality is a criterion, Tuscany still offers good value for money. Getting there The main Tuscan airport is Pisa (www.pisa-airport.com). Forence’s Peretola airport (www.aeroporto.firenze.it) has just one runway and no capacity for intercontinental flights, and as the low-cost airlines avoid it, it’s also a relatively expensive destination. Busy Pisa is served by, among others, British Airways (Gatwick, Heathrow), easyJet (Bristol, Gatwick, Luton), Jet2com (Belfast, Leeds/Bradford, Manchester, Newcastle, and (from May 2012) East Midlands) and Ryanair (Edinburgh, Glasgow-Prestwick, Leeds/Bradford, Liverpool, Stansted and Dublin, plus Bournemouth and East Midlands in summer). There are direct trains from Pisa Aeroporto train station to Florence every 2 hours (journey time 57 mins), and more frequent connections that involve a change at Pisa Centrale. Getting around The train is a reasonably fast and efficient way to get between Tuscany’s main towns and the places in-between (info and prices at www.trenitalia.com), and scenic branch lines like the Chiusi-Siena route or the private Casentino valley line from Arezzo (www.lfi.it) can make the journey itself an experience. Buses connect most smaller towns and villages (useful regional operators include Lazzi, www.lazzi.it and Sita, www.sitabus.it), though they can be scarce on Sundays; tickets should be bought before boarding, generally in newspaper booths or tabacchi (look for the blue T sign). Don’t forget that train and bus tickets always need stamping: for trains, in the orange machines on platforms and in station buildings, for buses, in the machines on board. Driving is the best (sometimes the only) way to explore the remoter rural areas. Tuscan roads are generally well-maintained, and 24-hour petrol stations are reasonably common, though don’t always count on being able to use your credit card in the machine. Parking in many historic towns is restricted or metered.