A Crane In Tuscany
We arrived in downtown Florence after 3 beautiful days in Venice. Venice was so beautiful, it was almost fake. It was like the Ancient Disneyland Corporation decided to build this water world town. We stayed near San Samuele, close to San Marco and Acadamia. We enjoyed a few 1£ espressos and 1£ gelati. Day 1 was mostly filled with walking randomly around the winding lanes and finding ourselves elsewhere from where we intended. St Marks Square was amazing. Pigeons, tourists, orchestras playing in open air cafes. Day 2, I got sick. Yey me. We still managed to see Palazzo Ducale and the Jewish Ghetto. I struggled to keep a vegetable soup down. Yeesh. Day 3 was a bit better, we went to Murano and saw glass blowers and had a lovely lunch by the canal. Local delicacies of sardines and polenta(very nice Sarah!). That night was capped off by a dinner of pizza and a performance in a church of Vivaldi.
An early morning vaporetto ride to the train station and 2 hours later we are in Firenze. After some breakfast and internet, we went to pick up our car hire. The hilarity commences. First of all, we are driving in a very busy city. Secondly, we are driving on the wrong side of the road. Thirdly, we do not understand any of the road signs. Anyway, we really wanted to see the hippodrome of florence and the boboli gardens by car…SO we managed to get on the S222 via Chianti. And 2 hours later were safely at our beautiful villa in Castellina in Chianti. It is every cliche you could imagine. Rolling hills of autumnal vineyards, pine trees and stone houses. Our little apartment in the villa has a kitchen and we have been making good use of it. As per usual, I managed to buy far too much groceries.
J was a bit sick on the Sunday so we just rested and I sat and enjoyed the serenity. Monday we went into the lil villages along the S222 . Tuesday, we went to Siena. Again, we got lost trying to find our parking garage. Nevertheless, we forged on. The Il Campo was magnificent and the climb up the Tower was very coool. We had a delicious lunch of rabbit and deep fried lamb cubes - guess who had what? Today we are in San Gigimano. It is a beautiful walled town with high towers and supposedly Italy’s best gelato champion has a shop there - our stop after Internet! Tonight we are having a wine tasting at our abode followed by dinner at the restaurant of the villa. Woot! So there you have it, a long held dream of visiting Tuscany found!
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