This was one dang early morning. Had to get up at 7:00am to get ready, eat and walk to our tour bus site.Anywhere where they offer “Walkabout” tours, I highly suggest you booking one. We loved it and so did everyone else. We talked with many people and I only heard accolades for the tour guide, driver and places visited.
The hotel said it was the number one booked tour.
I will give a short recap, as if I wrote everything, you may get tired of reading.
Our tour guide was Alessandro, who was funny, interesting, informed, professional and kind hearted.
The tour is called, “The Best of Tuscany Tour”, which takes you to Siena, a Tuscany farm and vineyard for a great lunch, followed by a visit to San Gimignano and Pisa in that order.
We visited “Siena” first. It is Tuscany’s most iconic medieval town and Florence’s biggest rival throughout their history. The town was gearing up for the much anticipated annual historical horse race called Palio and they race around the Campo, the center of town square. The town was packed with people of all ages wearing scarves representing the 17 different districts of the city, known as contrades. They are quite serious about this horse race that occurs twice a year in June and August.
So we are all standing and watching a little of the preliminaries and the tour guide for this particular town began walking away and calling for us but rounded the corner before everyone saw her go. In the meantime, a starting cannon for the trials was fired, scared the crap out of all of us including taking 10 years off my life and in that split moment two teenaged boys tried to lift Han’s wallet. Now I did not know this at the time because I am trying to catch up with the guide, which I finally did at the Duomo of Siena which is situated at the highest point of the city.
We had tickets for the gothic cathedral, one of Italy’s first and I let both guides know that Han was MIA. Alessandro went looking for him but did not locate him. It was just as well since it was a breathless climb to the top, however not to be missed. (And Han already had already seen the Duomo on several occasions in the past).
I went back ahead of the group and found Han immediately. He told me what happened and we were both very thankful that the two little punks did not succeed in stealing his wallet and Han thinks (and hopes) that he broke the one kids wrist, as he whacked him pretty hard. (I am quickly learning that Italy is not really my cup of tea.)
For lunch we drove out into the countryside for a real farmhouse lunch with delicious Italian food and lots of wine from their green vineyard. Before lunch though we toured the winery, vineyard and cow barn. A few cows were a bit aggressive and would have most likely hurt you if possible and we were warned about getting too close. They did not have to tell me twice. I stayed my distance. The calves were utterly adorable. (pun intended)
We ate at long farm tables, chatted with the other guest and drank some wine. Some more than others and I am such a lightweight that after even one full glass I was feeling lethargic.
The countryside was nothing short of astonishing and looked almost a pretend landscape in all its perfection.
The tiny winding roads up to the farmhouse bothered me much less going down with a glass of wine in me.
Next city stop “San Gimignano”, is Tuscany’s most preserved medieval town and is nicknamed the “Medieval Manhattan” due its very tall “sky scraper” type of buildings that at one time housed the folks living there. The richer you were, the taller you built.
We were literally too full of wine and tired by this time that we hiked up to the Piazza Duomo, sat for a spell to gather our breath and slow our heart rates some, then hiked up and around the Torres Grossa, began our descent to the bus and back on to our next stop.
I was very excited about this next leg of our adventure to Pisa. We parked outside the area and took a small train in. It was cute, but quite damaging and jarring to the back, due to the city’s road surfaces.
It was everything and more that I had pictured in my mind. Of course overrun by tourists, but I am one too, so there is that…
I wanted to do the whole cheesy “holding the tower up with one hand picture pose.” I am too short for it but turned out funny anyway.
We sat in an outdoor cafe and enjoyed a coffee while people watching. We also enjoyed a lovely conversation with a nice British family of four, consisting of super sweet mom, funny dad and cute 20 something year old daughters. They climbed the tower and told us about it. No way was Han doing that type of self inflicted torture and I was not going by myself. Besides that, I was not really up to it either.
Met up with the train ride back. They took us on an extended ride to show and explain more history of Pisa. Time for Advil after that.
Then onto the bus for the fairly long ride back to Florence. We did not even go out for dinner. It was late and we were plum wore out.
Recent Comments