After paying our exorbitant 10 minute, 25 euro taxi fare to get from San Gimignano to our accommodation nearby, we entered our room and stopped in our tracks. Even at night, it was beautiful.
With a gorgeous loft bedroom. We had to hang a towel over the beam at the top of the stairs because I kept hitting my head on it, it was that loft-y.
We woke the next day to a beautiful Tuscan morning, and could hardly believe we were there. In the Tuscan countryside. In a villa littered with rose gardens. Looking over rolling hills of vineyards, crested by conifers.
Seriously???? It's textbook Tuscany, and we were living it!
Our room was in the two storey section you see peeking out on the right there, looking out over that view.
We managed to hitch a lift with one of the staff into the closest town, Certaldo later that day.
First item on the agenda? Posting our warm clothing from Gallipoli and a few souvenirs home. Poor Tom was suffering carrying all of that gear around each day.
It's amazing how even the fairly simple task of trying to send a package in a post office becomes a massive challenge when no-one speaks each other's language fluently. It becomes this giant game of charades, punctuated by random not-quite-right-but-good-enough-to-get-the-meaning-across words, where everyone gets extremely excited when they finally understand what the other person is trying to tell them. It was really good fun, actually!
We then rewarded ourselves for mastering the postage challenge by wandering around the cute, quiet town of Certaldo. Even their road crossing signs are cute!
This was an absolutely gorgeous park along the main street.
They must have some secret magic rose-growing formula, because the roses here seem to grow like weeds!
Next item on the agenda? Of course, food!
And then while we were on the subject, we decided to visit the local supermarket to stock up on snacks. After all, one's stomach is never quite satisfied in Italy!
This wall of scanners floored us for a bit.
Mmm... prosciutto...
The boxed prawns we decided to give a miss.
And then of course, how could we miss trying the gelati!
Since there are no public transport routes to our villa, we had two choices:
1) Catch a taxi; or
2) Walk the 3 kilometres back.
Of course we chose the latter, being the cheapskates that we are. The locals found the sight of us walking along the side of the road with a camera pretty entertaining, and insisted that we take their photo. In retrospect, we should have asked them for a lift!
We decided to take a 'shortcut' that seemed to lead in the right direction, which about doubled the distance we had to walk, and then we reached the bottom of the giant hill leading up to the villa.
Of course the view was a good excuse to stop and brace ourselves for the climb.
And then we climbed and climbed and climbed.
Still not there yet...
This sight was very welcome once it came into view.
And then we collapsed once we reached our room.
Actually no, then we decided to create our own European washing line.
And enjoy the spoils of our trip to the supermarket, for a picnic dinner on the floor of our room.
The next day dawned just as bright and clear and beautiful as the last.
And then we discovered the pool!!!
We decided we deserved a relaxed day after our trek the previous day.
Tom decided to practice his action shot photography.
And then joined me in relaxing.
Before spending the afternoon on the terrace, gazing out at the view.
That evening, we were pottering around just about going to bed, when we realised that having left the windows to our room open all day, we'd received a visitor!
The poor thing had no chance of finding his way back out again, so we had to help him. We first tried to pick him up on one of Tom's shoe inner soles (of all things), which worked for a while, but he didn't like being carried toward the window.
So then I tried the hands-on approach. Unsuccessfully. The result was high-pitched screeches from both the bird and me.
So then I had the ingenious idea of throwing a pillow case over him (inside out of course, must be hygienic) and carrying him outside.
That was remarkably successful. He was a bit shell shocked for a while, but wasn't there the next morning, so we took that as a good sign.
After all that drama, we had to relax a bit more the next morning.
Later that day we got another lift from a staff member into Certaldo, from where we took the train to visit the hill town of Siena (more about that later). After which, we returned to Certaldo absolutely starving, and tried one of the local restaurants.
We then had to make the taxi vs walking decision yet again. And guess what? Like the idiots we are, we went with walking. Again. Through some miracle, some fellow guests at the villa spotted us while driving back, and took pity on us. I really don't know how I would have made it up that hill again that night, so thank goodness for friendly tourists!
On our final day, we enjoyed yet more perfect sunshine, and took advantage of the Internet until the final moment, when we were given our last lift into Certaldo.
Where we then we had a train station picnic...
And admired the uniforms of the train conductors. So very Italian.
And then our little Tuscan holiday was over! Florence next!
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