Blogs from Tuscany, Italy, Europe

After a couple of days in Venice, a day in Verona and a couple more in Florence, I'm feeling a little cultural overload - and I like going to museums! Lynn and I spent several hours in the Accademia in Venice and, today, in the Uffizi here in Florence. Both have wonderful collections of paintings from the Middle Ages up through the Renaissance and into the Baroque period. It's fascinating to see the gradual shift from the stiff poses and flat surfaces of the mediaeval works to the dynamic, life-like compositions of Botticelli, Raphael and Caravaggio (to name a very few). We varied the museum round with a walk in the hills north of Florence yesterday. We even broke out the hiking boots and poles again! The hills surrounding the city are an attractive mix of ... read more

We are doing another day in Chianti, however this time we are based around Greve, not Radda. Our plan is based around a small vineyard tour and tasting at 2:30, so in the morning we parked in Greve and explored the township, stopping in a degustation cave (wine shop and tasting) which stocked about 1000 Chianti wines with many in self service dispensing units where you can preload a card with credit and use the card to purchase tastings of the wines. The service was not so good, so we didn't stay long. Our first drive up to a Vineyard was no so successful as they could take us for a vineyard tour and lunch, but it would have overlapped with our pre-booked tour and tasting so we decided to go to another Trip Advisor favourite ... read more

Today is a non travel day, but we still needed to get out to explore the local towns. In the next town over, Montecatini Terme, we found a park with a local url=https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g194830-d12815927-Reviews-Parco_delle_Terme_di_Montecatini-Montecatini_Terme_Province_of_Pistoia_Tuscany.htmlMuseum, cafe and an original private house turned spa. While the museum charged, the original spa and parking is free. They also has 4 sets of taps from 4 natural water sources, all with varying tastes and temperatures. The cost for glasses of water with doctors prescription was €18, however n ot knowing this at the time I tried each with my palm cup. Doh! After the lovely walk around the park and museum, we picked a local restaurant for lunch. url=https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g194830-d2006122-Reviews-La_Cascina-Montecatini_Terme_Province_of_P... read more

We decided to have a quiet day today, so we drove the 40km down the Autostrada to Lucca, this is our second time at Lucca. This time we chose to park in a different park and walk a different part of the town, although Rose did want to go back to the book store that specialised in English and Japanese books. We walked up to to the other end of Lucca and found a loverly river running through the town. We continued to find more and more Public halls and Churches. What a lovely town Lucca is and so easy to walk around as is flat. Later that afternoon we where back to the local pool for swim and sun baking. What a life we have. This night we had agreed that Pasta was off the ... read more

For Al's first day we kept it quiet and decided to go to a hill top town near by. The town called Montecatini Alto could be accessed by Car or a Funicular Train. As the train is closed from 12:30 to 2:30 for lunch and we needed to be back at the accommodation by 3pm we decided to split with Rose and Al taking the Funicular Train and I drove up. Montecatini Alto is a lovely hill top town with all the usual tourist shops and BNB's. We selected Ristorante 'Caffè Giusti' dal 1898 for lunch and I know I keep saying it, but wow, another great meal. After we got back to our Accommodation and met with the cleaning lady we went down to the local community pool for an afternoon swim. Another great day ... read more