Tuscany

Well, we got home from out trip to Tuscany Sunday evening. However, my body still thinks it's in Italy. I've been waking up at 3am. I will tell you, I have now become an Italian driver so watch out!! We all had a fabulous time!!

We arrived in Rome and went to rent our car. We found the staff at the airport most helpful as we had no clue where to go. Lucky we got an upgrade to an Audi Quattro. Good thing too…four women and luggage needed it. I won't tell you we purchased two extra bags to come home with. Had to put the wine, cheese and olive oil somewhere.

Once we got up towards Poggibonsi the GPS (yes thank heavens we had one!) kept telling us to go down a dirt road. We weren't quite sure so we pulled into a tasting room and asked for directions. It's funny, and we found this in multiple places, nobody knows what's outside their immediate area..that or they weren't willing to share it with us. We ended up purchasing some wonderful Vernaccia from this tasting room. (I will go into that later) We were no better off after the tasting room with directions, but we did now have wine. Against odds, we went up this dirt road, up the "hill" (which was like driving up Mount Beacon) and we came across our new home for a week. A converted barn that had 3 bedrooms and 2 baths, basic kitchen and small living room. The view was wonderful. We could see the walls of San Gimingnano and the rolling hills of Tuscany! The place was great for us as it was within an hour of everywhere…San Gimignano, Siena, Chianti, Florence, Montalcino, Montepulciano and Pisa. However, it had no bells and whistles, so if you wanted a more luxury villa, you would have needed different accommodations.

The villa was on a farm winery complete with vineyard, olive trees, a rooster who woke us every morning, chickens, turkeys and not to forget the 5 cats/ kittens. One in particular who was at our doorstep every morning and evening when we returned. She even hung out with us until late at night while we drank wine.

The owners of the farm were very nice and sincere. Lovely people, to bad they didn't know English. It was quite amusing communicating with them. Angela would come down and be talking and talking and we had no clue what she was saying. One morning we woke to a basket of fresh Fava Beans just picked from her garden. The last evening we were there, they came down with 5 bottles of wine for us to leave with. It was very nice, but to bad the wine wasn't that good.

I'll write more tomorrow and take you on our journey through Tuscany……..