Aaaaahhh… Tuscany!

Mother Nature did her best to welcome us back to wonderful Tuscany with a blazing red sunset.  The drive from Venice took around 4 hrs with the return of ‘Fangio’ (aka Bruce) who didn’t take long to re-acquaint himself with the Italian style of driving.

Our rustic Il Macchione ‘Agriturismo’ (farm) is located close to the tiny and pretty medieval hilltop town of Pienza and is about an hour south of Siena.  Our host, Francesco, is lovely  and enjoys testing his self-taught English with funny stories and interesting information.  The agriturismo is an olive and wheat farm, although they do venture into other products.  Francesco’s ‘Mamma’ has great pleasure in providing delicious home-cooked goodies for our sumptuous breakfast each morning.

Our rooms (yes plural: very spacious – even a kitchenette) are in a typical Tuscan villa (around 500 yrs old) perched on top of a hill overlooking the rolling hills and medieval towns of Montepulciano and Montefollonico. While sipping a ‘Prosecco’ in the peaceful garden overlooking the hills and listening to the tolling of the bells in the surrounding ancient towns and the occasional gun shots (maybe hunting our dinner), it is only the odd chainsaw or plane overhead that reminds us in which century we are.

It’s a bit like… ‘Hello Tuscany, is anybody home?”  We seem to be the only tourists silly enough to be visiting the region at this time of year.  The majority of the restaurants, hotels and shops are closed for the winter and it can be quite a spooky feeling (for me anyway) being the only ones around.  Besides, Bruce thinks that it’s quite a positive thing that most of the shops are closed!  We also have the benefit of eating at one of two restaurants that are still open and that the locals love almost as much as us!

Medieval piazzas in the centre of the historic towns that are usually very overcrowded at the height of the season are deserted.  It’s as though we’ve accidentally wandered onto a giant movie set… Talking of movies, apparently some scenes from the last Twilight movie (New Moon) was filmed at Montepulciano.

On our last visit (October, 2008) the towns were sleepy… now they’re comatose!  But, we are still enjoying all the beauty this area has in bucket-loads – the charm of the crumbling architecture, the brilliant colours of the sunsets, the mouth-watering food (e.g. wild boar that is hunted locally), the winding roads that lead to surprising delights around each hair-pin corner… and all without crowds.  It’s cold, but it’s the warmest place we’ve been on this holiday with the average temp being 8 degrees.

I think we’re wearing out our little ‘toy camera’.  Every which way you look is a beautifully framed photo!  It has been wonderful to return and we’ll be sad to leave for Rome tomorrow.  It is the beginning of our long journey home, but there’s no place like home.  We fly from Rome to London tomorrow night and hope to catch up with Matty for an hour or two, but it’s very late when we get in, so we’ll have to see what we can do.

Happy Birthday Tiff and Barrie!  Hope you celebrated in style.