Friday, October 10, 2014

The keys to Tuscany

We're in Tuscany! The agriturismo we're staying at is gorgeous! It was built as a farmhouse around the 1300 or 1400s yet has been very thoughtfully restored with modern amenities. We took a very crowded bus to get to Greve - we happened to hop on the bus in Florence right when school was getting out and it appears that the middle and high school age kids that live in Tuscany all commute in to downtown Florence for school. Even so, the bus worked out great and we got dropped off right in Greve, in front of a pizza restaurant to boot! So you can guess what we did next, considering that it was lunchtime! We knew we'd come to the right place when we saw the house wine had my name on it!

Fresh off the bus in Tuscany and delighted to have pizza and house wine with my name on it!

Enjoying coffee and dessert at lunch before continuing the trek to the agriturismo.


Then we found the small tourist office in the town piazza and grabbed a map. I'd looked at Google Earth enough before we left that I was sure we could walk to our agriturismo even though we had all our luggage (backpacks). That turned out to be true, and we walked right to it, but this is hill country and the driveway up to the farmhouse was steep! We bucked up and trekked to the top, and were quite the sweaty mess by the top of the hill. This is the downside of going car-less! But it was all good, we got a tour of the grounds (beautiful with lots of patios and places to enjoy the stunning views) and headed to the pool for the rest of the afternoon. 

We made it to the agriturismo. One last hill!

Pool time!

Tuscan views

We bought a bottle of the agriturismo's own wine to enjoy by the pool!

Damon couldn't resist busting out some breaststroke

We are excited to be here!

In the evening we decided to walk into town for dinner. There's a path through the vineyard to an old medieval gate, which you need a key to open. We'd brought one of the two sets of room keys that we'd been given, but realized that the gate key must only be on the other one so we went back to the room and started over. The room also has 2 sets of keys, one for each door (that had already caused some confusion) so Damon decided to combine the keys into one giant key ring so that we'd have the ones we needed. They must weigh about a pound and we feel like janitors walking around with them, but it works and we're not locked out anymore. I said that it felt like we must have the keys to all of Tuscany! These medieval buildings are quirky for sure!

Greve's town square in the evening

The keys to Tuscany!

We had wild boar for dinner on the quiet town piazza and walked back through the vineyard to go back. I'm thankful I packed a small LED reading light because it's really dark walking through the vineyard at night!

We had a delicious breakfast here at the agriturismo this morning and are going to walk back into town to check out the piazza and all the small wine and salami shops during the day. They also have a wine museum that does tastings of over 200 local wines! Then we plan to walk to a medieval town called Montefioralle on the hill above Greve. From what I've read it still has walls around it and it's also the home of Amerigo Vespucci. Ciao!

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