CONQUERING ITALY'S CHALLENGING NARROW STREETS IN OUR VAN
good morning everyone I got to tell you I am super excited we headed up the hill from Carrera and we have made it almost up to the marble mines and this has been a fascinating ride up to the town you can look up and see the mountain side all of a sudden it goes from Green and Lush to just white from the marble and you can even see here the river is lined with marble and this right here sort of at the base of the mountain is just where some of the the the marble Mine Workers over the years have just carved these little statues and so it's kind of a these aren't for sale but as you come up through the road you can see all sorts of processing plants you can see where they're cutting it into blocks for the sculptures there sculpture pieces for sale also there's marble slabs for floors and for wall facings we even went through some parking lots and saw some curbs made from Marble so this is the famous Carrera marble and I got to tell you that this is the place where even Michelangelo used to come to to get the marble for his famous Stones so if you think about David Michelangelo's David it came came from right here on the side of this mountain so we're going to check out these statues and then we're going to head up to the hill we're going to try to get a look at the marble mines now it's a little bit rainy overcast today so hopefully the weather clears but there's also a little town up on top of the hill that's difficult to get to that has a very specialized Regional product that I'm excited to try and if you like B you're going to want to hear about this so come on guys let's go explore these awesome marble [Music] mines this guy is far the best face but the notice tipped off but he's got the best h facial feature and I think this guy practicing his noses he's got the pointed out nose yeah he's got all different noses it's like a marble totem pole yeah it's pretty fascinating this is where you come to practice to see if you're sculptor or not all right ready to head up to this little town see if our van can get there or not well I did see a bunch of Hall trucks going up and here comes an RV down two of them three of them all right let's go we can make it we can make it so we've made it up maybe a half a mile from the little town we're headed to and we saw a nice big parking lot on the side of the road where the other motor homes were parked so we're gonna Park here and walk up the hill now at the top of this hill is this town the mining town and it's got a cool culinary dish which we're not going to tell you about till we get up there right ctie but Kurt is stoked and it history is Kurt's giving you hints but its history has a lot to do with with the mining up here so let's go check it out all right we could see the marble mines on our way hold drive up here absolutely fascinating but down there is our van H our house half mile walk up to the city uphill but it is steep and it is switch backy and it is narrow but we're going I think I can I think I can the [Laughter] train all right I have a confession to make we have not been as active in the last month or two as we were in South America and we've got all sorts of excuses mostly it's been wintertime rainy and cold and so in our age if you don't use it you lose it true so this is a steep climb you may not see seem like much but especially with Snow's heart condition you know we got to slowly work our way back up to Fitness and uh so this is starting to rain starting to rain this is a good exercise and unfortunately she got wind this parking sign up here towards the top and so no we still did the right thing the easy parking for our van was down at the bottom and the walk Up's good for us to just got us both breathing hard and taking breaks but I can see Tom so let's go wow look at this as we get up here into town you can definitely see the marble so here's the parking up here you can see it's kind of skinny there's basically space for two Vans up here but it is very steep so we did the right thing we did the right thing down where we're parked there's a nice area where we can get the cats out especially later once the H trucks stop running we made it to the lard Rock Cafe this is the place we planned for our culinary delight for today tell you about it when we get in here all right bad news we did not make a reservation and he just said they are complo meaning they do not have a spot so we're going to walk up through this town look at this place we're going to walk up and see maybe if one of these other restaurants doesn't have a space for us and look we walked into the center of town and the whole entire Plaza is marble all right we did find a place that's open it's a little cafe as we come in you can see all the little marble trinkets look at this guys [Music] all right we're up in the small mining town of colada and all around this is the marble mines but that's not the only reason we came here we kind of saw something on the Google Maps called Lardo so I saw lard Rock Cafe Lardo area lard lard markets everything kind of all the restaurants were Lardo themed so I Google searched it and it turns out Lardo is kind of a form of bacon if you will but hopefully we can go over to a lardera where they make it so we can learn more about it we're also going to try to learn about it by tasting so I don't know everything about Lardo other than I know I like bacon I know I like Piggy so we came up here to try some and this particular area they made larda rather than bacon or Pudo for the miners here in the marble mines so this wi dates way back to centuries and it's specific to this area so we got some food coming let's try and see what this stuff's all about it's a little 1912 local beer nonfilter from right up here so should be interesting and a little nonfiltered water for me water Al natural for me lady CT's going to have a little too but mainly for me how is it it's good it's like a full body it's not too strong it's a blonde and I don't like it too Poppy so for me this is a delicious Beery okay all right the first thing we ordered is the starter kit of Lardo and if you guys look at this Lardo you can tell it is mostly fat with just a little tiny strip of meat on it it's supposed to be aged very specially here in marble B it's also sliced razor thin oh and then another starter this is some kind of Penta I believe an eggplant room a lot some crustinis with some tomatoes and I don't know what the other stuff is we got a variety of different tastes let's go wow so what I think is happening on this plate is we have different flavors of Lardo now from the research we did this stuff absorbs flavors like crazy so as we eat these we'll try to tell you what we're eating you going first Kurt I'll definitely try some this one here is supposed to be the Classic this ought to be interesting I get some bread just in case I can tell you it is Lord is it cold it's room temperature the fat is very buttery and subtle and the little hit of meat on there is chewy but the stuff actually melts in your mouth and there is definitely a hint of salt and rosemary That's a classic and it's actually pretty good I have no idea what flavor I just got but it's got a little dollop of some sort of sauce on [Music] it here we go it just goes [Music] away you could eat too much of this I think it's something you only want to eat a few bites off I have no idea what flavor that was but it was good what are they we don't know I don't know if this is the palinta cake or if this is like a flan but it's a fried little bit it's uh it's good I don't know I thought you like this I don't know what it is but um I don't know if it's the palenta or the flan or what it's it's fried probably in the Lardo and it is very Savory and it's better than french fries it's like smooth and creamy oh it's so good so I can tell you for me if you just eat the slice by itself it's a bit much but when you put it on Christini it's like it's like a butter almost cheese buttery cheese that just melts into the bread and one of these has a little bit more of a sweet doce flavor than the first one that I tried which was more like a salt Rosemary Mario that's how you eat it on the bread all right we're digging in all right for the record we did not eat all that Lardo but the sampler platter was absolutely dish delicious but after that Lardo we did feel like we needed like a salad we also have a little ravioli coming to kind of top off our whole meal so we're full and CT is on his second beer but this Lardo will go back to the van because I eat breakfast potatoes in the morning and I can tell you that melted down in a skillet is going to make those potatoes off the charts smell so good in the morning too but we're putting some vegetables on top of all that fat well I do have to say that in my opinion was probably the most unique culinary experience we have been on in our four or five years traveling the world in the van and I wouldn't necessarily describe it as the most delicious um but unique unique it wasn't bad by any means uh very flavorful but you just really only need a piece or two of that just like if you're putting butter on a potato or on a piece of bread you just want want to spear one little piece on there but uh what was really cool is as we were leaving Galileo whose dad apparently owns that and the lardera across the street said that he would give us a tour of their laboratory area now I think he saw us doing all the videoing and heard about our YouTube channel and it might have been a little bit of a special tour that not everybody gets to do but he took us in the first thing we had to do is put these little surgical looking booties on our feet to protect that and uh then we went down some stairs and we went and we saw of course where they prepped everything they cut everything very clean surgical looking uh kitchen area where they slice everything up but then we went down some more stairs and we went into a room where we had to duck and go under and there were a lot of small boxes made of marble and they had different numbers or names on them and this room the first room was the special recipe Lardo where they make it specifically for certain restaurants in Rome or Florence or around the world so that restaurant would have their very own box their very own secret spice recipe and it all gets aged at different times so that was the first room and a lot of those boxes were handmade boxes some of them dating all the way back to 1700 I mean and the marble boxes were made from Marble you know that was mined right here and some of that stuff had been Aging for 3 years already so but then we went into the second room which was much bigger with much bigger uh boxes and that was the production room where they make the Lardo to sell and uh and then in there they had drying racks in the back where we see all different cuts and everything they had some for the cheeks it was made for like carbon some from the rib it was just really really cool he let us smell some of the herb mixtures he would not tell us those mixtures of course we knew some Rosemary and some other stuff was in there but uh really a special cool little behind the scenes tour we just got of of Lardo and he did tell us that this is the main area in all of Italy Europe or whatever that they make Lardo now there are a few places that have popped up here and there but this is the famous place that has made it since way back enrollment times some of these Lardo rest come all the way back to Roman days and the Lardo was made because the good portion the good portion of the meat was cut off and sent away but they needed to f um feed all of these marble miners so they saved that behind and figured out a way to turn it into something that could go up into the mines and not go bad and and kind of give some food to the miners here so that's how it developed but it definitely turned into a delicacy and it was a really cool experience and and it's time to walk a mile down this road to the van before we get caught in the rain you got anything else Kurt I would just say that this is one of the Delights of traveling in a van I know this is probably not on everybody's bucket list and would be kind of something that'd be hard to get off the beaten path and do but it's one of those special things with a special story that just really makes our traveling unique people too and how cool was Galileo Galileo amazing G so yeah that was his dad's business thank you Galileo we appreciate it your English is awesome he said his dad had been doing this since the 60s quite a while good morning everyone welcome to morning face well I'm pretty excited today because well we had the Lardo yesterday and we could not eat all that it was rich it was good it was unique but we did bring some extra home and for those of you who don't know I'm a breakfast guy and most of the time I don't bring you along for breakfast but this morning I'm going to use some of the Lardo from yesterday to cook my breakfast potatoes so here's the leftover Lardo now I think this is quite a lot it's compressed some over last night but we'll put this in here start off with a little bit turn the stove on now we have a in duction cook top so I'm going to put that on six and let's see how this Lardo renders [Music] down all right here we go I season it up a little bit I use a little garlic powder a little th and a little pepper and this is going to be yummy right here now I'm going to cover this up and let those potatoes Steam for a while maybe like about 5 minutes let them crisp up on the bottom take the top off flip them around and it won't take long until we have some yummy potatoes all right guys there it is right there breakfast potatoes cooked in Lardo with two over easy eggs ah I'm going to get my day started off right I will tell you my Lardo potatoes were excellent this morning with my breakfast and my eggs breakfast of champions don't judge guys it's what I do anyway it rained a lot last night all night last night even this morning it just now kind of stopped but you can see sort of the Milky water coming down the river that's from the marble up the mountains that comes down all the marble dust is white you can even see it on some of the cars from the roads and stuff now we're going to try to get up and see this marble Quarry I've been to quaries all over in the United States as part of my job back in my previous life I visited gravel cories lime rock cories granite cories all kinds of quaries I've never ever ever visited a marble quy so if you're wondering why these marble mines are so fascinating to me that is one of the reasons amongst another is the popularity of this Italian marble all over the world and specifically in some of the famous statues and works of art that we all have heard about so anyway we're going to go down here we don't have a tour officially scheduled so we're going to go down the mountain see if some kind of way we can magically work our way into one of these quaries to get a tour if not hopefully we'll be able to tell you a little bit about them we found the tour guides on the side of the road but unfortunately there was no room for us on the tour today it is the off season here and they are only running two trucks which were both already full so we will do our best to share with you a few things we learned about the mines while we were here first from a distance as we were driving in the apuan Alps in this region look snowcapped but that is actually the white marble the Carrera marble Basin is some of the most sought after marble in the world according to UNESCO this marble has been used since the Roman Empire for buildings and sculptures it is a billion dooll industry that employs over 1,000 people from the local area and yes even today the miners still eat Lardo throughout the day the area is home to over 30 active mines which leads to the question will the Carrera marble mines run out of marble well the Italian government actually regulates how much marble can be mined from this area per year with those regulations it is predicted that the mine will not run out of marble for at least 400 years without those regulations full-blown mining in these 30 plus mines would likely deplete the marble within 200 years now what makes this marble so special well the marble in China and Greece has very big crystals which makes it too hard the marble from turkey has very small crystals which makes it too fragile but the Carrera marble is the perfect balance and is Coveted around the world in the mines they cut the marble into into large slabs and then transport it down the mountain to the port of Carrera where it can be shipped around the world it takes 4 days to cut one slab of marble and then a full day just to drive that 20 to 35 ton slab of marble down the curvy Mountain Road to the port now imagine in the Roman times where they cut all of this by hand and then rolled it down the mountain on wooden Wheels the things they managed to do back in those days is just simply amazing today marble from this area is used for many products tiles countertops art and even toothpaste so maybe you get a taste of this marble every time you brush your teeth now Michelangelo visited these bins often to procure marble for his sculptures the marble for the famous statue of David came from these mountains right here now now as we leave the area and drive towards our next destination I have a pretty good feeling we'll be seeing a lot of the marble from this area well we have switched drivers we're about an hour into our 2hour drive to our next spot we were pulling out this morning the Google lady did what she is notorious for doing took us off the main road put us on some teeny tiny little curvy narrow road going through neighborhoods and mountains sometimes it's a little scary when she knows that but this time it ended up being a pretty really really pretty drive through there seeing the Terra seeing the neighborhoods seeing a little bit more of what we like and the road never did get too narrow but every time she does that there's always that fear of oh no is she taking us under some short Bridge or down some oneway alley she did okay today but we're skirting Outside The City of Florence Italy and it's really pretty interesting drive through here through the neighborhoods through some of the commercial buildings a lot of little motorcycles and scooters a lot of tight roads a lot of kind of crazy turns and one thing they love in Europe is the roundabouts and they're actually pretty efficient 3 tons 2.5 m w Jesus Christ am I okay over there you got 8 in you got a foot on this side this right here is a little tight here feel I can throw up you want me to drive they're almost out of it close over here those seals over here you're almost got it got it [Music] right in 200 M turn left turn left okay yeah but you got a big bump here right there at that yield sign where you're going to turn around left here yeah out just easy easy little more you're good you're good you're good [Music] things got tense even G picks up on it we uh ended up on a very narrow road squeezed through there literally um and then we're headed to where we want to park and came up on a sign that said 3 m height we're 3.2 so I had a mini meltdown which we weren't videoing so y'all didn't get to see the mini meltdown but they do happen sometimes when we're driving this big old van so Kurt has taken over driving we have gone through this road with the Google Map we think we can make it under this tunnel up here as long as we stick to the middle so yall keep your fingers crossed and then after that we'll have to see what happens but we're still 2.4 miles from where we're supposed to park and it's been quite the adventure on these old narrow roads all right that was a stressful culmination to our day's drive here to our camp spot but we are at the train station here and we did find a little place to Snug in here there's no no parking signs right here we're tugged against the fence there's plenty of room to get in and out around us otherwise the parking lot's pretty full we assume this will probably clear out as the day goes on but we plan to take the train down into Florence to have an amazing day exploring the city but guess what guys we're going to do that in the next episode if you haven't already don't forget to hit the Subscribe button hit the like button turn your notifications on and we will see you on on the next next one cheers guys if you like this video be sure to subscribe to our Channel and hit that notification Bell so you guys know when we put out new videos and don't forget you can always follow us over on Instagram to see what's going on in between videos cheers guys
2024-02-05 19:22
