Tuscany/Florence:

Florence (Frienze) is a beautiful city, so much character and many fascinating things to see.  Michelangelo’s “David”, Da Vinci’s museum, numerous churches, statues and artwork.  Of course I need to mention we are not having the smoothest trip and in fact something has been going wrong everyday so far….first the bank machine, then pick pocketed and the night we arrived we were stranded at the train station in Dicomano and our hosts didn’t want to come get us (small communication error….what else is new right?!).  SO we were unable to make our city tour in Florence the first day because we had to get a rental car.  But we managed to do some touring of the city and of course started our many courses of Gelato!  Oh Gelato, oh so delicious!  It was my mission to have a small cup twice a day; if Ry had her way it would have been at least three times a day!  I believe the highlight for everyone was when we had dinner on the Piazza Della Repubblica (oldest square in Florence) at a restaurant that had opened in 1894 – we ate “homemade” Italian food, listened to live music and the girls would steal away between the dinner courses to ride a carousel in the square.  It was really surreal!

The Tuscan farmhouse was so beautiful, the houses on the property (including the one we stayed in) were over 400 years old and the landscape was breathtaking.  I was able to take a few hikes around the farm, took the girls fishing (Ry caught a 3lb fish) at a small lake, the girls were able to swim in the outdoor pool and we had a general great time; we also saw a porcupine and three deer.

To keep pace with the rest of our trip, in our particular house the hot water heater (on demand type) didn’t work right so everyone (well except Nichole she won the hot water lottery) had cold showers or no showers at all (like me and Dad).  I washed my hair but are you kidding me…there was no way I was getting wet with cold water.

We loved our host, he was a character, full of stories and looked and acted just as you would imagine of a remote family owned wine maker.  He treated us as family (hence why we had cold showers, and had to buy our own toilet paper and dish soap).  It was a very fascinating experience and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything different.