Tuscany, Italy
Staying in the Tuscan countryside has been on our bucket list for years. Trish and I had both been to Florence for a few days before, but that was fifteen+ years ago. This time, we wanted to spend time outside the city. After a few months of constant travel and exploring cities, we were also looking forward to planting ourselves in a quiet place for awhile. Spending a week or so in the countryside in early Fall seemed like the ideal next stop.
We arrived by train from Verona with changes in Padova and switching to a local train in Florence down to Siena. With a 90-minute “layover” in Florence, we had time to quickly go show Zach the Duomo. We were more excited than he was and he did not quite understand our reminiscing of our last visit to Florence many years ago, before he was even in the planning stages. We had a life before him? :)
Once at Siena, we hiked a mile or so to the Avis car rental station as a car is definitely needed to explore this area. We had rented a country house three miles outside the town of Siena. Siena was a good location as a base because it is fairly central to the area and the other smaller hilltop villages, but is large enough to be on the train line from Florence and is also large enough to have supermarkets and everything else we would want access to with a longer stay.
Morning mists in early fall
We spent most of the time in Tuscany, exploring a nearby hilltop village each day, picking up fresh food and returning home at night to cook dinner and sit outside enjoying the fall evenings. It was a true holiday within our holiday.
Hiking to and around San Gimignano
Basic food groups for the week
Day in Monteriggioni
Val d'Orcia and village of Pienza (our favorite place in Tuscany!)
As our friend Mark. said when I was asking for some recommendations - “Walking around ancient walled cities drinking great and cheap wine with amazing meats all day, what’s not to love?” The Tuscan countryside certainly agreed with us and we can not wait to return.
