We arrived in Florence to start our 1 week stay in Tuscany. It was the first time Kostas and I visited Florence together. We both had very good memories of our last visit to Florence, we thought that by going there together it would be even better. Unfortunately, it was not the Florence we had visited over a decade ago. Way too crowded, and perhaps.. we’ve changed and have much more of appreciation for natural landscape. We couldn’t wait to get out into the country.
TRANSPORT
We hired the cutest sporty Fiat ( Abarth)… named it Zippy! And having a car to drive around in Tuscany is a beautiful experience in itself!
ACCOMMODATION
We started at a couple of nights in Locanda la Casina Di Lilliano located in Castellina in Chianti. Beautiful accomodation overlooking a vineyard and had a pool right next to an olive grove.
Then we moved to one of Kosta’s favourite accomodation, a farm in Pienza called Agriturismo Podere San Gregorio. It was Kosta’s favourite because of our host Luciano. Didn’t speak English but made such an effort to show us his cellar, home made wine, pecorino, prosciutto and olive oil. We communicated with him through Google Translate which for the most part worked well but there were also hilarious moments where translation was definitely not right!
And lastly we stayed at the very beautiful Tenuta Santo Pietro. The grounds of this place was absolutely stunning, from the pool, the courtyard to the lounge area. And our rooms were very luxe compared to our farm stay rooms.
WHAT WE DID
Visit old towns: We did trips to various towns including Siena, Pienza, San Gimignano, Montepulcino. They were all so beautiful in their own way.
Visit wineries: All of the accomodations that we stayed at in Tuscany had a selection of wine tastings, you can also do wine tastings in the towns. We also visited the winery Castello Di Ama for tastings while we were staying in Chianti. We visited Avignonesi Winery while we were staying in Pienza.
Have a picnic: There are so many amazing produce you can pick up in one of the towns and have a picnic by the vines or overlooking the rolling hills of the countryside while watching the sunset.
Photography: Val d’orcia and Crete Senesi was on the top of our list to visit just to take photos.
Relax: we went to Bagno Vignoni where they had natural hot springs and a whole town dedicated for pampering and relaxing.
