Bus to Siena, walk in the rain down very steep, stone streets to car rental place where Millennial Italian Budget worker was never taught ‘customer is always right’ or that humans in the 2010’s use images and PDFs on their phones instead of printouts. Remembered how to navigate traffic circles, got a bit lost in the hills of Tuscany and then found our farmhouse B&B in Castelnuovo Berardenga. The calm quickly seeped in, removing the madness left by Florence.
The Casa Cernano B&B was much more beautiful than we imagined. Catherine, an Austrian native, her Staten Island born husband Lawrence and their young son welcomed us like family. We booked six days and and we immediately knew we could have stayed longer.
Day one was decompressing and catching up on some work out in the yard, surrounded by olive trees, under the Tuscan sun. Could be worse. We actually worked just about every minute we were out here in the country though this "work" is better than many people's vacation.
Dinner night one was fruit, cheese & wine at the farm house. The blue sky turned to orange sunset to starry night.
Breakfast was excellent: fruit & chocolate croissants, bread, homemade jam, yogurt, local cheeses & hams, cereal, eggs to order, coffee, juice... a perfect way to start a long day.
Tuscany, in case you didn't know, is all about wine & food, in that order. We were at the southern part of the Chianti Classico and we spent our first full day driving around vineyards and olive groves. Not an ugly place.
The first two medieval, stone walled towns we visited were very touristy. An Italian couple from the north suggested we go to San Gimignano and Volterra. Coming from Venice and Florence we were used to the camera totting crowds but we hoped for something different.
We finally found it at San Gusmè! There must have been ten people out in the village during the three hours we were there: six tourists, three cafe workers and a local old man walking at a turtle's pace cracking jokes to us in Italian as we passed. The castle/hamlet was right out of a fairytale. I kept looking up for Rapunzel.
Went to "the big city" of Siena one day. I was excited to see the center square where they shot the opening scene to the recent Bond film Quantum of Solace. It was a bigger piazza than most in bigger cities and stunningly beautiful. There is a yearly bareback horse race in the square as depicted in the Bond pic. We had a Spritz and beer here at sunset, spectacular.
No trip to Tuscany is complete without visiting a winery. We got a private tour of Fèlsina winery after another couple cancelled. Traveling “off season” has it's advantages!
Most of the food we had in the area was very good but we splurged one night on a fancy restaurant with a known chef in Villa a Sesta. The restaurant was L’Asinello (translation: Donkey). Heaven.
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