We just got back from another trip to Italy. This one was unusual in several ways. First, we don’t usually do overseas trips two years in a row and our vacations have always been just the two of us up until now. In addition we have never stayed in one place more than three or four days at a time and we have never rented a villa either. So lots of firsts with this trip and they all worked out really well. We were originally set to be a group of six but Bob and Wendy Bye had to cancel due to a medical issue. (Bob is fine — Praise The Lord!) So it was Diane and I along with my Mom and Diane’s long time friend Clara Fortier. This was the first trip overseas for both Clara and my mom which made it that much more enjoyable for Diane and I — They LOVED it!
Our itinerary took us to Florence first for two nights at Hotel LaScaletta near Ponte Veccio. That’s us at the front entrance in the picture above. Nice spot — 600 year old building with lots of steps. Fortunately, there was an elevator but steps were still inevitable as they were throughout the vacation. I include that because Maw did such a good job handling those with her new knees. The hotel has a great roof deck where their restaurant is located. A trip up there was a great way to start the vacation to show Maw and Clara the city they were about to explore. (Some nice shots and a video from there in the first slide show — click below)
We were just in Florence from Thursday night till Saturday morning. From there we returned to the airport to pick up the rental car and drove to our villa in Tuscany for a seven night stay. (See the pictures in the second slideshow for some shots at the villa) I will always think of the trip as the “Villa Vacation”. None of us wanted to leave that place — just beautiful!
While we were at the villa, we took day trips to Pisa, Siena, Montepulciano, and San Caciano DeiBagni. We saw some stunning scenery and ate some great lunches on these trips — had an adventure or two in the process too — more on that later. I’ll be adding slide shows to cover these trips and more as time permits.
After a week at the villa, we drove to Rome where we dropped off the car at the airport and spent Sunday and Monday touring Rome. More to come on that too.
Here are just a few shots I have processed so far. The links below these take you to my Google Photos albums where I have five other batches of pictures. Hope you find these enjoyable!
Google Photo Slideshows:
- Here is a slideshow from Florence and Pisa
- Shots from our visit to the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence
- This one shows some shots of The Villa we rented
- Here are some shots from our day trips through Tuscany
- Finally some shots from our visit in and around Rome
Villa Side-note:
Here is a little side-note on the villa. We got a call on the villa land line Thursday morning from the owner. He wanted to know if we could come up to the main house that evening for drinks. Sounded like a nice guy with a “lovely British accent”. I told him we were doing a day trip that day so he said he would “pop down” sometime Friday morning. When he showed up the next morning, he was not exactly what we were expecting as we imagined the owner of a three thousand acre estate/farm. I found a picture of Luca and a short blurb about him on the company website — see below:
Luca Savelli is the owner of the large Tenuta di Monteverdi, a family estate bought in 1904 by his grandfather, who turned it from a malarial backwater into a national model-estate for farming, hunting and farm-house building. Based in London, Luca visits the estate on a monthly basis spending longer periods there in the summer, though otherwise works as an archaeologist, primarily in Ethiopia and Italy.
We had a very nice visit. Luca helped us with some directions for our day trip that day and told us about an attraction we had not heard about. We really enjoyed the attraction and I was quite impressed that he would take the time to see how we were doing personally. Click here to visit his company website.