Love, Mom: Tuscany

From Florence we rented a car (an awesome Fiat!) and drove to Tuscany. We were a little stressed that the car rental place didn't have a GPS for us but thankfully we really didn't have any problem getting around (once we figured out how to put the car into reverse-- no joke this took us about 10 min).

We drove from Florence first to San Gimignano which is this old town that still has standing towers from ancient feuding families. Although it isn't much more now than a tourist trap I really liked it, the old cobblestone streets, the walled city and the towers, I imagined the Capulets and Montagues and Romeo climbing to Juliette's window (ok, I'm an English teacher, what do you expect?). The town was really small so we just walked around for a while, got pizza for lunch, did some shopping and headed out.

The scenery while we drove was spectacular. Beautiful rolling hills with these terraced fields all up the hills. It was so green and beautiful and felt a little like we had gone back in time. I loved coming around a corner and happening upon a little town on top of a hill, so cool.

Our next stop was a castle (well I guess ruins of a castle) called Monteriggioni. There wasn't much to see there but you could walk on the outer walls (built in the 1200's, impressive all by itself) and get some great views of the surrounding countryside. We got gelato there (of course) and walked the walls before heading out.

After the castle we got to Sienna. This was probably the most stressful part of driving since the roads were a little confusing in town. In Sienna we visited the church (of course), climbed a crazy winding staircase to the top for some amazing views and visited the crypts of the church which again, reminded me of Romeo and Juliette. If I was still teaching I would have taken lots of pictures of the crypts to have my kids imagine what it would have been like for poor Juliette to wake up in that dark scary place!

Sienna didn't live up to the hype for me. Maybe we didn't stay there long enough. We only stayed a few hours and then took off again, after stopping at the grocery store (an adventure in and of itself) for some food to bring to the "villa" where we would be staying.

Our next stop (this was a long day!) was Cortona. I LOOOOOOOVED Cortona! If you have seen or read Under the Tuscan Sun (I haven't but will now). It is where that book/movie took place. It was just this lovely, small, romantic, rustic town. I seriously just loved it. Plus we got there right at sunset so it was just beautiful. We ate at this adorable little restaurant where Aaron had a man crush on our old man server and I just loved every second of it.

After Cortona we had the adventure of finding the "villa". The VERY generous CEO of Aaron's work let us use their Tuscan time share for two nights at a place called Borgo de Valgli. It was literally in the middle of nowhere, about an hour outside Cortona. We drove up this windy two lane road up the mountain, down the mountain, sure we were lost until we came to a tiny little sign that said Borgo de Valgi. Then we turned off the road to drive 2 km on a one lane gravel road and there we were. In the middle of the countryside in a restored 14th century farmhouse! It was amazing! We had our own little apartment with 2 bedrooms and two bathrooms, a kitchen and livingroom, it was bigger than our condo! We got there late so we just headed to bed.

The next day we decided to take as a relaxing day we tried to sleep in (apparently 14th C farmhouses do not have window coverings though so it was kind of bright!), we did some laundry and just hung out by the pool with incredible views (until I got scared away by the plentiful scary bugs, we were really in the country!). We had the salami and cheese and bread we had bought at the grocery store and I fell in love with REAL Italian salami. In the afternoon we went back to Cortona since I had loved it so much, walked around, went to the church and the fortress at the top, had a snack and hung out for a while. We decided to have dinner in the small town that was closest to Borgo di Vagli but when we got there we realized it was a VERY small town and there wasn't a restaurant. Instead we bought some food at the market and Aaron made me an authentic Italian missionary dinner (pasta and red sauce). It was delicious.

The best adventure at Borgo di Vagli was coming home that second afternoon and discovering a HORNET in our apartment. If you have never seen a hornet before and right now you are imagining a bee, try again. It is more like the biggest dinosaur type bee thing you have ever seen. Aaron and I were both FREAKING out. I hid in the bathroom screaming while he tried to get it out of the house. Aaron finally went and got someone at reception who turned out to be some 90 lb English woman who was also scared silly (she had actually been stung by one before so her fear didn't make me feel any better). She though, knew how to open the big front kitchen windows and was able to shoo the hornet out that way. It was pretty hilarious (after I was done screaming).