"Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one." ― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun
One guess where I arrived this morning! After a brief but beautiful, meditative, all-around exceptional stay at 7Pines Resort Sardinia, part of Destination by Hyatt (please check out my posts about what I saw and experienced there on Facebook and Instagram), I'm now in Pisa and excited to start this year's Buy Tuscany conference. From the Pisa local tours we "buyers" were offered, I chose "Tradition and Innovation: Silence and Science in Terre di Pisa," and I'm so excited to go on it tomorrow!
After seeing Pisa murals by Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra (an homage to Galileo) and by Keith Haring, we head tomorrow afternoon to Calci to reflect on silence and contemplation at the National Museum of the Charterhouse, founded in 1366. Then we visit Pisa University's Natural History Museum housing over 400 years of local art, history, and nature including the largest freshwater aquarium in Italy. Where we go next is what I'm really geeking out over; we're going to Virgo, one of three observatories in the world detecting gravitational waves and phenomena in the deep universe, like the merging of black holes. Its detection arms reach almost two miles in the Tuscan countryside, and it only opens for specially-arranged guided tours. As a longtime audience member of Brooklyn's Secret Science Club, I actually (mostly) grasp what Virgo is doing!
After networking on Thursday, I join a group of travel pros on the post tour I chose called "The Unknown, Unexpected Tuscany: History, Food & Wine, Nature." On Friday I'll be visiting the Vicari Castle of Lari, the pretty village of Peccioli (home to MACCA - Museum of Contemporary Art in the Open Sky Palazzo Pretorio Museum, and more), the mysterious medieval village of Palaia (home to the Temple of Minerva Medica), and ending in our home for two nights: Pontedera, the city of motors and the Piaggio Museum, the largest museum in Italy dedicated to motorcycles and one of the largest of its kind throughout Europe.
Our Tuscan journey continues on Saturday with a walking tour of Chianni (popular with chestnut seekers and wild boar hunters), Terricciola (member of the National Wine Town Association), and Lajatico, the birthplace of Andrea Bocelli and where every July a concert is held in the Teatro del Silenzio. Only one show a year breaks the silence of the countryside, and Lajatico is also popular with contemporary art lovers with a summer exhibition that turns the quaint village into an open-air museum.
There is SO MUCH to Tuscany beyond Florence, and I hope my annual trip to the Buy Tuscany conference helps showcase to you all the hidden gems I can help you uncover on your next trip to Italy.
Please follow along with me in Tuscany on Nine Muses Travel's Facebook and Instagram, and get ready for next week's journey through the South of France!
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Danielle Dybiec
Founder & President
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