Under the Tuscan Sun

After boiling our bums off in Naples and Rome and living on a steady diet of take-away pizza slices and gelato, you could say it was an understatement that we were looking for a change.

My vote was for Tuscany.  Florence had always been on our list, but after standing in the lines in Rome, the thought of waiting for tickets to the galleries in Florence was the last thing we wanted to do.  So we made a massive call and decided to skip Florence all together and headed for Siena.

Unfortunately, the accommodation was no cheaper and the food, if anything, was more expensive.  Sigh..  More pizza.  At least this time we sat and ate it in the beautiful Piazza di Campo. 

I would love to show you a picture, but unfortunately every single one of my Tuscany photos are on my corrupted hard drive.

The next day, we were faced with finding somewhere cheaper to stay or heading to another city.  In desperation and doubt we asked the local travel bureau for help.  Luckily for us there was a self-contained apartment at a local farmhouse.  Yay!

We jumped on one of the extremely extensive local buses and puttered out into the countryside of rolling hills lined with vineyards and pencil pines.  We had our own sitting room and kitchen, bathroom and 2 bedrooms and we settled in for 4 days.  That handy little local bus had a stop right outside and then dropped us off a mere 6 minutes later at the local supermarket!  Whilst we couldn’t cook (only because there were not pots or pans!) we did have a fridge. 

 It was still hot but now we had the added bonus of an inground pool with views out over the rolling hills.  Aaagh…