Onward to Tuscany

We left Venice on Friday (yesterday, as I write this). We crowded onto the vaporetto with a ton of other people, including a whole crowd of tourists who were all headed to the train station, just like us. Oddly, in this crowd we were considered the experts on the system, possibly because we had gone to the train station on Thursday to get our tickets. Anyway, we met two women who were heading to Tuscany to participate in a bike tour. One woman had traveled a lot in the US, but was on her first trip outside of the country. (I'm not sure that I would choose Italy for my first trip abroad - maybe it's better to ease yourself in with something easier, like the UK.)

Moving along, we had a lovely (and surprisingly punctual) train ride to Florence. We stayed in Florence just long enough to pick up the rental car and then set out to the agriturismo that we'll be staying at for the next week. This is the part of the trip I've been most nervous about - aside from a short trip last year in Greece, I've never driven in another country. Starting with Italy hardly seems like a sensible way to start, but it's clearly essential to a week in Tuscany, so I'm biting the bullet. This is one of those times that I'm grateful that I had to learn to drive stick shift in high school to drive my mom's car, because I would hate to add that to the challenges of driving here. They gave us a cute little Ford Fiesta.



It's pretty nice to drive, actually - peppy, but with good gas mileage. I certainly wouldn't want anything bigger, considering the size of some of the roads.

An agriturismo is a working farm (usually making wine, olive oil or both) that also rents out apartments to tourists. You generally have to stay at least a week. Some of them, including the one we're staying at, have full restaurants. After last year's trip to Greece, where we spent a week on Lesbos, we decided we really wanted to spend a week in one place during the trip, so this is perfect for us. I'm just lucky I have an awesome sister who lived in Italy and knows about these things. :-)

So, in case you've been looking for more reasons to hate us, here are some pictures of the area where we're staying. All of these pictures were taken within 100 feet of our front door. First, here's the building. Our door is all the way to the right, with the curtain billowing out.



You can see the hills and valleys of Tuscany just behind the building.



There's a pool.



There are a few olive trees next to the building.



And a church on the hill.



Nice, huh? And how have we spent our first full day here? Not doing much, actually. Right now, we're in a laundromat, because we're just about out of clean underwear. (Music note of the day - as we're sitting here doing laundry, Umbrella by Rihanna is playing. Some things really are universal...)

Tonight we'll be going to the agriturismo's restaurant and Monday we'll do a tour and wine tasting at its winery. The only question now is how much wine and olive oil to buy. No matter how much we buy, it'll be a real challenge to bring back (especially since you can't bring a bottle on as carry-on). On the other hand, shipping is expensive (with high fixed cost). Our current thinking is that we're going to have to buy a whole lot of stuff to justify the cost. So, if we happen to come back with a 20-gallon cannister of olive oil, don't be too surprised. :-)

Tomorrow, we're hoping to go into Florence. We'll probably do that a couple times and maybe take a trip to Siena, as well. Oh, and possibly take a trip through Chianti, but we're not sure about that yet. (We're staying near San Casciano, which I think is technically in Val di Pesa, rather than Chianti, but they do make Chianti wine here, as well.)