We were up early today as we had an 8:15am meeting time for our Best of Tuscany Tour. We made our way to the train station meeting point and jumped on our massive bus along with 60 other people. Our guide, Barbara, was really nice and talked to us on the 1 hour drive to Siena.
Once in Siena we walked a bit to meet up with a local guide for a 1 hour walking tour of the city. Our Siena guide was somewhat of a crazy fanatic when it came to Siena, but we soon learned that most of the people from the small towns in Tuscany were like that. Trent and I equated it to college football fans, but instead of football teams, they are crazy about their towns. Siena was amazingly beautiful and had a very interesting history, especially with their annual horse race in the main Piazza in town.
After our tour we had an hour on our own so we did a little shopping and exploring. After Siena, we headed to a farm for a tour and lunch. This "farm" grew everything from wine grapes to olive trees to wheat to tomatoes (and then some). They also raised cattle for beef, pigs and chickens. After a tour, we all sat down to lunch and a wine tasting. The food again was amazing and other than the cheese, everything came from the farm (bruschetta, pasta with meat sauce, salads, ham, salami and almond cookies). Trent even got seconds on the pasta and cheese. We then ordered a few bottles of wine to be shipped home, bought a couple of bottles of wine to take with us and headed back to the bus.
A quick 10 minute bus ride later, we were in San Giamanino. We were given maps and told to find a certain gelateria in town as it won the best gelato in the world 4 years in a row and were given an hour to wander on our own. We headed for the gelato and tried some of their more abstract flavors which they are known for. Trent had saffron (not so great) and cherry and I had ricotta & blueberry (very good) and blackberry & lavender (good to start off with, but the lavender got a little strong after a while). We enjoyed the amazing views of Tuscany from the this little town and marveled at how pictures of this place can't do it justice. We decided that if we ever decided to leave Omaha, we would move here in a heartbeat (of course that will never happen, but we can dream, right?).
Our next stop was Pisa and was over an hour drive. After all of that food and wine, most of the bus fell asleep, including Trent and I. It was a much needed nap and refreshed us for Pisa. As buses are not allowed in the center of Pisa, we hopped of ours and jumped on a tiny little train-like shuttle. From there we made our way slowly to the center of city, where the famous leaning tower is. From where we entered the piazza, the tower looked normal, but the further you walked away from it, the more it leaned. So amazing. And odd. We took the required photos and wandered around the piazza a bit. We got tickets to go inside the church and learned that it is the 3rd largest in the world. It was very pretty inside and had one of the most elaborate tabernacles I have seen. It was a beautiful day and had cooled down a little from earlier, so we walked around the piazza until it was time to get back on our train to the bus.
We arrived back in Florence at 8:30pm and had found out from our tour guide that our hotel had an amazing restaurant in it, so we headed back there for dinner. We had already had some really amazing food so far in Florence, but this was by the best. We both had amazing pasta and then a meat course. And of course we had a bottle of Chianti (which is becoming one of our favorite red wines very quickly). After a nice dinner we settled in the for the night, knowing we had a day of travel to Rome ahead of us.
Florence was an amazing city and we had already started planning to come back for our 10 year anniversary (we're thinking by then we can pull together enough money...maybe). We would love to see some of the other towns in Tuscany and hit a few more farms/vineyards as well.
Love you all!
K&T
Love you all!
K&T
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