I have scaled these city walls

The opportunity to taste World Championship Award winning ice cream was enough to get us to San Gimignano, a particularly attractive Tuscan hill town just north of Siena that is a popular visitor attraction.

San Gimignano’s skyline of towers is the result of rivalry between different nobles; today only one of these towers can be climbed by the public and to earn our gelato we firstly walked to the top of the Torre Grossa to enjoy the view of the town and the Tuscan countryside of olive trees and vines beyond and walked all around the medieval walls; the latter an excursion that few of the thousands of visitors appear to do, as we mostly had the path alongside the impressive walls to ourselves.

Finally, we were able to enter the Gelateria di Piazza and spend some minutes selecting from the diverse range of flavours, only briefly distracted by the framed photo of Tony Blair among the famous previous customers displayed on the wall.  We both chose Pistachio flavour, Anthony twinned his with a traditional Stracciatella, Carol added a champagne sorbet and everyone of them tasted fantastic.