Our drive north from Assisi was really good and fairly easy. We got away from our Airbnb early – before 8:30am and travelled mostly on major highways. We did have to jump off the first highway for a bit to avoid traffic but the rest of the way we were able to move along nicely. There were many tunnels as we drove through the north west side of Umbria into Tuscany. The last hour or so of our journey to Benabbio was exciting with hairpin turns, narrow roads and some crazy little villages. We passed through the town that claims to be the birth place of Pinocchio – well the author lived there at least. The town was called Collodi and they really embraced Pinocchio with all kinds of scary stores full of dolls, puppets and way too many Pinocchio souvenirs.
The final drive up into the western foothills of the Apennine Mountains was really crazy with many tight turns and extremely narrow roads. The town of Benabbio came into view when we were about 20 minutes away and we had very little trouble finding our Airbnb which was located right across the street from the church and main square. We will be staying here for the next 2 weeks!!
The Airbnb is a typical Italian structure with lots of tile and wood. It’s much larger than our last 2 places – 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and it has an awesome terrace on the top level (3 floors up!!). We explored the town upon our arrival (around noon) and found an awesome restaurant higher up on the hillside. Today, Sept. 16, we decided to have a quiet day and explored Benabbio a bit. Mostly we relaxed on the terrace, read, crocheted and then had a tasty Aperol spritz back at the same restaurant!! Matthew cooked a wonderful pasta dinner and we ended our first full day in Benabbio with a lively game of Yahtzee.
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 