This weeks PhotoFriday is “Open” so as I usually do, I opened Aperture and typed in the keyword. Aperture helpfully came up with… all my pictures from Copenhagen. Sigh. So it took a but longer to find this picture of an open window in Tuscany.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Contrast.” I’m entry number 249.

I nearly didn’t take part in this weeks PhotoFriday challenge, “Photoshop Skills,” as I’m not a big Photoshop user. I tend to tweak images, enhance the colours, maybe a little dodging and burning, but nothing that would show my Photoshop skills — the whole point of my edits are normally that you can’t see them!

Then I remembered that I’ve spent quite a lot of time over the years trying to make the perfect panorama. The above image, taken in Siena, Italy, is perhaps the best that I’ve managed. (I’ve used a variant of this one before for PhotoFriday.)

There are quite a lot of options for a theme like “Square,” but in the end I decided on this one of a square access hatch covered in graffiti. I’m not sure whether “Earth Liberation Front” is a serious organisation or not but the name amused me.

It was taken in Corniglia, one of the towns of the Cinque Terre.

Please also vote for my entry in the last challenge of last year, “Best of 2009.” I’m entry number 188.

There’s no PhotoFriday this week but I thought I’d post an picture anyway. This one was taken in August 2001 and is from Sirmeone looking back down the peninsula towards Colombare. It was this holiday, in Northern Italy, when I first started getting into photography more seriously. I went to Desenzano with no plans and a stack of different types of film. I’d read a lot about Velvia 50 and really wanted to like it but I ended up sticking to Sensia which tended to work better for me and was significantly cheaper!

The Cinque Terre — a series of small, connected coastal villages — has been on my, admittedly rather long, list of places to visit for some time, but when I first flew out to Tuscany I didn’t quite know how achievable it would be. Sure, Google Maps said that it would be a two hour drive from the villa, but I wasn’t completely sure that I was using the right address and I have been late several times when relying on directions cribbed from the Internet.

Walled cities are a Tuscan specialty. I’d been to a few in the last couple of weeks and, on paper, Arezzo looked to be another gem in the making.

However shortly after arriving things did not look quite so promising. Although an old city, much of what you can see on first entering the city is dull, generic office buildings, including one company amusingly called “multiass.”

Inside the city walls things immediately get… confusing. I walk down a street. To my right is a church, ahead are a mess of signs pointing in every direction, each one presumably a place of interest. With no guide book on the city I had no real idea what any of them were and arbitrarily picked “right.”

After the disappointment of Pisa¹ I was looking forward to the highly regarded city of Lucca, which is only twenty five kilometres north-east up the SS12.

Like Pisa the parking situation was dire and it took several attempts to find somewhere to put the car. The comparisons to Pisa end here, however, as I immediately liked what I saw.

Immediately inside the walls are those very typical narrow, cobbled streets. There were no shortage of shops with extensive displays of meats and cheeses, bread and cakes. These all needed investigating. While I’m sure that most of these places see a good number of tourists passing through, they’re certainly not at the level of tea towels or cheap models of local sites.

I really wanted to like Pisa. When I last visited in 2004 I came away fond of the area around the leaning tower but unimpressed with pretty much everything else I saw of the city. It was grey and bland and unattractive. But I was hoping that I had been wrong. It had been overcast and rainy, and I had had to rush around the place. Perhaps I had just not done the place justice?

A few days ago when I drive to Poppi I saw signs for Rufina and Borgo San Lorenzo. Today I decided to head for the latter and stop off in the former.

First stop was the Vine and Wine Museum, which I found at the end of this long row of tall trees.

After the last few days of rain I was annoyed with myself to be so relieved to get out of the hot, bright sun. Inside there were tables littered with leaflets publicising local events, wine tasting tours and the museum itself. In the distance were murmuring voices but by the entrance, near the tills where you’d expect someone to be taking tourists money, there was no-one.

After leaving Monteriggioni I aim the car towards Castelline in Chianti, an area well known for its wineries.

And, well, I passed a few. After they thinned out I did a U-turn and went back to the first one which looked the most promising. From the road there was a long, straight line of trees either side of the drive up to the farm house at the end. It was a bumpy drive and I pulled in next to a couple of other waiting cars. I got out and strolled towards the entrance.