June came and went with our weeklong vacation to San Gimignano Italy. This was the longest vacation we have taken since being married that was not to go see relatives. This area of Italy is the Tuscany region (wine/olive region) about 1 hour south of Florence. Pisa is 1.5 hours west and Rome is 5 hours southeast. Easily the best vacation we have taken and I would venture to say there will be few vacations that will ever match it. We stayed in a small villa about 1.5 miles from the city - the villa was surrounded by vineyards, on a hill over looking many of the valleys. There were 5 other apartments at our villa, and while the week before and after our villa was full, the week that we stayed, we were the only ones there. We essentially used our villa as a "homebase" that allowed us to take day trips to many of the cities around the area.
This is San Gimignano - called the "Manhatten" of New York due its 13 towers. When we bought our tourbook in December of Italy, we had no idea where we would go. After we booked our trip we realized that this picture was on the front cover. So a book of ALL of Italy, and the city we were staying on was on the front cover. Of course, some tourists (on the weekends) but staying there the whole week allowed us to go during middle of the week and night which was very nice.
Food consisted of Pizza, Pizza, Ice Cream, then more Pizza. In 7 days, Daniel ate pizze 13 times, and ice cream 10 times. Here is 1 of 10.
One more picture of the city before moving on...
Did I mention that our villa had a swimming pool. While we did have "odd" weather (50-70s) for the time of year, it was nice!
So on our whirlwind Italy trip, we went to many cities in the area. First was Volterra (yes, as in the song).
Next was Pisa:
Then Siena:
And then Monteriggioni:
And on the last night, we stumbled across an Italian Festival in Colle Di Val D'Elsa (the crystal city). Italian Festivals are MUCH different than German Wine Festivals, and we really stuck out here. It was more like an Italian cafeteria line where all the food is behind a wall and you have to "guess" what you want. "Give me 1 Polpetti, a Trippa in Umido, a Zuppa di Farro and the BIGGEST bottle of Vino Rosso you have... Ciao Bella!"
Next is Copenhagen!
