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Today we woke up at a reasonable time and felt pretty good about getting a decent night’s sleep. We took the water taxi to the train station and boarded our train to Florence. Our final destination being a little villa outside of Monteriggioni called
Stomennano .
Up until now our train rides have been uneventful and timely, not today. We should have expected problems when we couldn’t find our car or seats, they had changed equipment. Once we got reassigned and on our way it got a little stuffy in the car; oh the air conditioner is broken. The attendants on the train tried propping the doors open between cars which gave a little relief. Finally they offered to reassign us to a car with air conditioning but we were over half way through the trip by then so why bother. We later discovered that the other car’s air conditioning was also broken and hotter than our car. Anyway with all this we pulled into Florence about 45 minutes past schedule.
We unloaded the bags and Bob and I trudged off to get a taxi to the rental car agency. We rented a van from
Europcar that would seat nine.
We were all skeptical that it would truly hold all eight of us and luggage but we were pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a very comfortable van. The rental process was straight-forward and easy.
We picked up the van and drove back to the train station to find our group hovering around the luggage, which had been stacked into a corner. Apparently the gypsies were honing in our luggage hoping that someone wouldn’t notice them and they could take off with a bag. Now when I refer to gypsies in Italy it’s not the pretty dancing ladies in the movies, it’s like Cher’s song, “…gypsies, tramps and thieves..” They are an organized group of thieves that hang around public areas. Anyway no lost baggage, we loaded the van and were on our way.
It was about a 45 minute drive to
Stomennano . You can’t miss the turn off the highway at the castle city of Monteriggioni. About a mile (I know I should be using kilometers) past Monteriggioni there is a driveway lined with Cyprus trees leading to the villa. This is Tuscany as you would imagine. We drove up the gravel road to the
gate and honked three times and were greeted by the house attendant, just kidding, but there was a gate.
The description of the villa was grossly understated; it was a case of under promise and over deliver. I will describe it in more detail as I continue with this blog over the next week, but suffice it to say this was a traditional home of a very well to do family of the time period in which it was built. In summary the three story section that we were in was roughly 7000 square feet with four bedrooms, a formal dining room and a myriad of other rooms.
We knew that we would be coming in late so we had asked if they could stock the fridge for us and that they did with cheeses and cheeses and veggies, etc. (did I say cheese twice, yummmm, I could live on Italian cheese alone) We cooked a traditional Italian dinner and enjoyed the rest of the evening with some wine.
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