Cinquecento! Touring Toscana
In Al's mind's eye of our trip to Tuscany, a key part of the story was driving from village to village in a convertible Fiat 500 (a 'cinquecento'). Perhaps unsurprisingly, rental companies don't rent out 1960's Fiats so we had to make do with a Nuovo Fiat 500, which we've named 'Bambino'.
What Al imagined:
So with the top down and Coffee Break Italian podcasts on the car audio teaching us how to order drinks and other vital language for our 10 day stay we set off in Bambino for the 2 hour drive to Monteroni D'Arbia, just south of Siena where we have a reservation at a Castello / agritourismo (highly recommended by our fab friends Liz and Bill). Having been told horror stories of driving in Rome, and noticing that a fender dent is standard issue on Roman cars, we were happy to make it out of Rome with Bambino unscathed.
Spoiler alert for those of you who have been to Tuscany before - you know what's coming. Hundreds of ridiculously beautiful pictures of the Tuscan countryside. Golden fields and gentle sunlight. Rolling hills of beauteousness.
For those who have not been to Tuscany, we are AWESOME photographers. These pictures were incredibly difficult to take.
Et cetera, et cetera.
On our journey north up to our castle, we took our time and in fact had planned to stop for a dip at a volcanic lake with supposedly the cleanest water in Europe. Unfortunately this was the one cloudy, windy day we have had in Italy so it wasn't really the day for a dip. Unable to find a lakeside spot for our picnic, we took a random road off the main road and just landed at a spot with a view like something out of a movie where we could just spread our blanket in the field and look at the view of the lake and valley as we ate our cheese (yes, still the blue from the farmers market), prosciutto and fresh bread.
How good is this eh? THIS was the Tuscan tour we signed up for. We finished our lunch and set off again.
And you know, it's nice to have a reliable modern car rather than one of the older jobbies. At least we know we're not going to break down, and we can plan how long we --- what was that. Awww you're KIDDING me.
Perhaps we should have gone German instead of Italian... Ah well, Al's pretty handy with a set of tools around a car. Onward!!
We arrived at Castello di San Fabiano to be greeted by the lovely hosts Andreas and Beatrice, as well as the dogs Fez and Lula (more on them later). Andreas was most amused that we had driven a Fiat 500 from Rome.
The view from our bedroom window in the evening light like a postcard, but then everywhere you look around here looks like a postcard.
Fun Italian expression for the day: 'Mamma Mia, sto Bellissimo!' Yes, this is a real expression!
Next up: more from our Tuscany travels.