The power went out on our last day at Le Torri. Then it came on again, then it went out again. Back and forth. Needless to say, we didn’t have much internet access, so it was hard to plan our day. The guys were contemplating a cooking class in Firenze, but they hadn’t heard back.…

Need I say more? Well, I guess if you’ve never had Brunello I should elaborate. And there’s a pretty good chance you haven’t because Italy doesn’t export a lot of it to the US. The winery was in Montalcino, Ciacci Piccolomini d’Aragona. Our hostess was another very interesting woman (like the one in Montespertoli). She…

Another day trip to Florence. We finally made it to that special sandwich shop, the Oil Shoppe. My friend Shawna recommended it. Apparently its all she lived on when she did her studies abroad for six months. The sandwiches were quite good, all four of us devoured them happily. After eating we saw the Firenze…

We had a pretty calm, easy day. We drove into town for snacks to make a picnic lunch and brought them back to Le Torri. We set up outside and munched our goodies for a while before discovering the swarm of mosquitoes who were also happily munching. Later we went to a small winery in…

Our first wedding anniversary (Oct 5th)! We began the day by trying to go to Coop (grocery store) to pick up a few things, but it closed the minute we walked up to the door. Most stores close between 1:00 and 3:00 throughout Italy. If you forget that fact, its quite annoying. It got us…

First full day in Tuscany – off to Firenze (Florence, why do we call it that?) to walk around and visit the Uffizi gallery. We attempted to have lunch at a specific sandwich shop, but we didn’t have enough time before our scheduled museum visit. And thank goodness we had tickets ahead of time, that…

Sadly, we left our gracious hosts at Cancabaia and drove two and half hours south to our next destination, Tuscany. We were staying at Le Torri, an agriturismo in Montespertoli. An agriturismo is basically a farmhouse turned resort. Read more about them here. Our host, Gabriele, checked us in and showed us to our villa.…

I actually woke up early and went for a run. We brought our running shoes and some workout clothes thinking we would try to exercise, and this was the first (and sadly last) time I busted them out. Running down the country road so early was quite peaceful. The only ones awake were me, some…

Our first morning at Cancabaia we awoke to damn cow moaning at 5:38am. One of the dogs chimed in and howled along, which I have to admit was kinda cute because the cow already woke me up anyway. I managed to fall back to sleep and we when finally got up there was a wonderful…