Author: crimsonkathyrnandcrew

Our absolutely amazing month long Italy trip is at the end!! We’ve seen so much and had the best time doing it!! Our trip back to Rome (on Sept. 29) was no less interesting as we drove a coastal route from Benabbio to near the airport.

It was super cool to see the change in geography from our mountainous Tuscany landscape to the farm lands of the Tyrrhenian Sea shore. We drove past Livorno – a large port that the cruise ships land at and along a highway that went right by the shore. We stopped for lunch in a small town called San Vincenzo and walked along a really well made breakwater.

The last part of our drive was busier, especially when we got near the airport. We stayed in a small hotel in Fiumicino and were able to walk down to the beach for our last Aperol spritz! Although we only spent a few hours in this area, we found it to be clean and very community minded with lots of folks walking and biking along the boardwalk. It’s a good thing the beach area was so nice because the hotel left a lot to be desired (noisy, hard beds and no hot water for showers!!).

The hotel was supposed to have an airport shuttle but didn’t so we kept the car so we could drive to the airport in the morning. Matthew and Margie’s flight was early (9:40am departure) so we left for the airport at 6:30am! Our flight doesn’t leave until 2 pm so we have a little time to kill before we can check in and drop off our luggage. Time to enjoy a second cappuccino!!

Italy has been wonderful! Travelling with Margie and Matthew has also been wonderful – we get along so well!! Time to start planning our next combined holiday!!

For our last Saturday (Sept. 27) in Italy we decided to check out Lucca’s Saturday market. It was slightly underwhelming – more clothes than anything else. I did manage to find a nice Italian made zippered fleece so it wasn’t a total washout. We had a nice coffee in the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro and did a little bit more shopping before we headed back to Benabbio.

After lunch, we drove about 35 minutes to visit the medieval village of Barga. Barga was listed as one of Italy’s most beautiful villages and it lived up to that title. It was surrounded by mountains and had a fantastic view from the Cathedral of San Cristoforo which was located at the top of the village. We wandered through the cobblestone laneways and found galleries and displays of local artists – unfortunately most places were closed (afternoons in Italy!!). We didn’t stay too long and were back home around 5pm. We had another wonderful dinner at our local restaurant. The place was very busy which was really good to see because we’ve usually been the only customers!

Today (Sunday, Sept. 28), we’ve been packing up and cleaning up for our departure tomorrow morning. We’ll be driving back to Rome on Monday and will be flying home on Tuesday! Can’t believe the month is almost over!

Our last major city touring happened on Sept. 25 with a visit to Florence. We left our Airbnb early – a little after 7:30am to make the roughly 1.5 hour drive. Mark had already bought a garage parking spot for us so we were able to park very close to the Ponte Vecchio. We did have tickets for the Uffizi Gallery and Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze but unfortunately I bought them for Tuesday instead of Thursday (which we found out Thursday morning before we left), so we had to improvise our visit a bit.

We started our tour of Florence with a walk over the Ponte Vecchio. We then headed to the Piazza del Duomo – what an impressive sight!! The multi-coloured marbled walls of the cathedral were amazing. The crowds around this area were also amazing – so many people. We were going to try to see the inside of the cathedral but the lineup was crazy.

Our next stop was the Palazzo Medici Riccardi – the Medici family home in the mid 1400s. The architecture of the palace was very interesting with huge high ceilings and typical renaissance arches and columns. The building not only displayed furnishings from the Medici family but also many of the artworks commissioned by the family.

From the palace we headed to the Galleria dell’Accademia but again the lineup was crazy so we made our way over to the Uffizi and were able to get tickets for a 12pm entrance. The museum/gallery was very busy so we went to their cafeteria for lunch and then explored the artworks. We saw Michelangelo, da Vinci and Botticelli plus many more! It was a bit overwhelming and by mid afternoon, we were all ready to get a cup of coffee. We did a bit of shopping, had our coffee and returned to the car to drive back to Benabbio. Florence was great and one day just gave us a small taste of what the city had to offer. We all decided we’d love to come back another time to do a week-long stay!

On Sept. 24, we had a day off from touring around so Mark and I decided to explore the Castle ruins and old church here in Benabbio. The ruins and the church (Chiesa di S. Michele) date back to before 1200. The walk to reach these structure was quite steep and it was surprising to see how many more houses (and cars) were up that high. The last part of the climb to the site was a well marked dirt road and then path.

The site of the church (which has been rebuilt many times over its history) once held cholera victims from the mid 1800. Benabbio had an epidemic the summer and fall of 1855 and 46 of the 900 villagers died from the disease. Archaeologists excavated the site starting in 2007 and learned a lot about the cholera epidemic of that time.

Not since leaving Rome have we been in such a crowded touristy spot as Pisa. We started our visit to Pisa (Sept. 23) in the rain and fog. It was another interesting drive down our mountainside as we went in and out of the fog. Once we were in the valley, the light rain was our only obstacle (and it wasn’t bad at all). We arrived in Pisa a little after 10 am and even though it was raining, the place was full of folks looking around and taking their iconic perspective photos holding up or pushing over the leaning tower of Pisa.

We walked quickly through the Piazza dei Miracoli (Cathedral Square) and decided to have a coffee while we waited for the rain to let up a bit. We easily found a table inside one of the cafés and relaxed for about 45 minutes. The rain let up and we headed out to do a bit of shopping and then look around the Catheral Square. We had wanted to go into the Pisa Cathedral but you must obtain a time specific ticket (it’s free) to be admitted and the earliest time available was 2:45pm. We didn’t want to hang around that long. We had read that the only really interesting part of Pisa was the square so we didn’t stay very long.

We left Pisa a little after 1pm and drove about 30 minutes to the seaside town of Viareggio. This town is known for its beaches, marinas and a nice promenade. We spent a bit of time looking around the marina area and then went in search of some gelato. That proved to be our biggest challenge of the day but we were successful in finding a nice shop on the promenade! We got back to Benabbio around 4:30pm and ordered pizza from our favourite restaurant in town! Another excellent exploring day!

The weather has been absolutely perfect for the three weeks we’ve been in Italy. But this upcoming week’s weather prediction is leaning towards a wet week, starting with some pretty decent thunderstorms on Monday. Because of this prediction, we decided to move our trip to Pisa from Monday to Tuesday and we ended up heading out around noon on Sunday to do some grocery shopping to hold us over for Monday. Seeing that we were out already, we decided to do a little Sunday drive in the mountains north of us – wow it was well worth the scary roads!!

We started out on our local highway – SS12 (which continues as far north as Verona!) and drove along the river valley up to an artist community called Vico Pancellorum. The route along the river was spectacular – tall, rocky mountains on both sides and the fairly deep river gorge on one side. As we climbed up into the mountain, the road narrowed to an even smaller width than our road up to Benabbio. It was very thrilling (code word for somewhat terrifying 😁)! The first indication that we had reached the artist community was this interesting fenced field with all kinds of sculptures made from metal and other materials. We stopped at the Pieve Romanica di St. Paolo – an old gothic looking church that had the most amazing view.

At the top of another uncomfortably narrow road, we reached the village of Vico Pancellorum. We wandered along the cobblestone streets (well let’s call them tiny laneways) and were treated to all kinds of artwork mounted on the walls of the buildings. It was a very cool little village way up in the mountains. Made me wonder how and why all these artists ended up there.

Our drive back down the mountain was quick with only one nail biting close call where a car coming up met us at a terribly narrow spot. Got to love roads with steep edges and no guardrails!! We arrived back at our place around 4 pm and enjoyed the late afternoon sun on the terrace.

One of the best reasons to visit Tuscany is definitely the wine!! We’ve been enjoying Italian wine from the grocery store (some even from Tuscany) but today (Sept. 20) we decided to try some truly local wine from the Tuscany wine region of Montecarlo. Montecarlo is known for having the best Tuscan white wines because they use semillon, sauvignon blanc and Pinot bianco grapes while most of the other Tuscan areas use trebbiano and malvasia grapes. Our wine tasting palettes are not that sensitive to tell the difference but we were certainly up for the challenge!

Our drive to Montecarlo took us back down the windy, steep road that brought us to Benabbio and for a Saturday, it was quite busy. It didn’t take us long before we were in the heart of the vineyards. We decided to go directly to the old town of Montecarlo to get a detailed map of the region. The tourist info agent was very helpful and he pointed out 5 good places to visit on a Saturday (not all vineyards are open of the weekend). Back at the car we came up with a good plan to visit all 5, ending with a vineyard that had a good restaurant.

First up on our wine tour was a little wine shop very close to our parking spot called Chicco D’uva. This shop wasn’t at a vineyard but it did offer wine and olive oil tastings from a vineyard called Agricola Stefanini Tronchetti. We tasted a white chardonnay and a rosé. Both were delicious so we bought one bottle of each! Off we went to vineyard recommendation # 2 which was called Fattoria La Torre (about 3 minutes from our first stop!!). Unfortunately no one answered the cellar door so that stop was a bust!

Our third vineyard was again just down the street from La Torre. This cellar door was very interesting – the actual door had shattered glass and a big piece of plywood covering the broken door. We rang the bell and were shown into a lovely tasting area! This vineyard, called Tenuta del Buonamico, had way more wines to taste but we stuck with whites and rosé. Margie tasted a sparkling moscato and liked it very much. The rest of us tasted a sparkling wine and a very yummy chardonnay blended with a crazy number of grapes! We bought 2 bottle of that wine and Margie bought a moscato.

The last vineyard stop, Fattoria del Teso, was the most picturesque of them all – it totally matched my imagined Tuscany vineyard!! Fattoria del Teso sits on about 70 hectares of beautiful Tuscan countryside, surrounded by pines and cypresses and the farm dates back to the mid 1200. The grape wines stretched out in all directions as we drove up the lovely driveway to the main tasting area. This vineyard usually requires guests to book in advance for a proper tasting but we didn’t know that so they accommodated us with a brief tasting (they were busy with a group of tasters!). We only tried 2 wines here (a white and an orange wine – not a rosé) and ended up buying one bottle of the white.

We finished our wine tasting adventure with lunch at Fattoria IL Poggio. This vineyard had a large restaurant that catered to bus tour groups. It was very busy so we had our lunch (which was very good) and then headed back to our home away from home. It was a great day of wine tasting and we were happy to head home with our haul of yummy wines!

After a slow start today (Sept. 19), we decided to do a little exploring around the area. We drove down to the closest town to us called Bagni di Lucca. We visited this town when we arrived to get groceries so we knew our way to the street parking. We walked through the little park and made our way to the tourist information where we picked up some maps and info on vineyards near us (this will be another adventure!). The town was very sleepy at 10 am so we decided to drive to the next town (basically west of us) called Fornoli. Fornoli wasn’t much of a town but it did have an old suspension bridge that was quite interesting. The bridge (called Ponte delle Catene) was built in 1840 to replace a stone bridge built in the 1300s.

Our next stop was a town called Barga. We were expecting an old town but instead it looked fairly modern with lots of shops along the main street. We walked along this street but didn’t find much of interest although there were more people walking around here than all the other towns put together!! We left Barga and headed for another bridge called the Devil’s Bridge – its proper name is Ponte Della Maddalena. The ancient stone pedestrian bridge spanned the Serchio River and was built in 1100. We walked across the stone bridge and had a great view of the river valley.

Our last stop was back in Bagni di Lucca. We had lunch at a cute little cafe and then did a bit more grocery shopping before heading back to our place on the hill!! Tonight we’re planning to have dinner at one of the two restaurants in town!!

In order to give Mark a break from the somewhat stressful Tuscany mountain driving, we’ve decided to only head down and up our crazy windy road every 2nd day (a day off in between!!) On Wednesday, Sept 17 we did a road trip to Lucca about a 45 minute drive from Benabbio. Our drive on smaller roads was pretty good – traffic was light but there were several places with construction so that slowed us down a bit.

Lucca is called the City of Art and it is well known for its circular centre square called the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro and its very well preserved renaissance era city walls. These walls are so wide that there is a wide walkway on the top that enables you to walk all the way around the old city.

Our first challenge when we arrived was finding a parking space!! It was very busy so we had some fun finding a spot but were eventually successful. We had a short walk to get inside the walled city and from there we explored the narrow streets. There were many shops and restaurants and we had a good morning buying souvenirs and exploring the lovely streets. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant specializing in fresh pasta. It was delicious!!

After lunch we found an English book shop – that was a good find! We also visited the Palazzo Pfanner. It was constructed in 1660 by the Moriconi family (wealthy merchants of Lucca) but very quickly this family had to sell the building. By the middle of the 1800s, the Pfanner family bought the large house and added to it. The family still owns the building and its gardens.

We ended our visit to Lucca with a walk along the top of the wall. It was really nice to walk around the top because it was not very busy (all the tourists were inside the walled city). Trees lined the wide walkway so it was cool and shady for our walk. Lots of people were biking along, walking their dogs or just strolling like us.

The drive home was way more interesting than the drive to Lucca. We took the same route but there must have been a major accident or closure on the highway because the opposite direction traffic was nuts! Big trucks were forced to drive along the narrow streets that wind through towns. At one point a truck with a double trailer passed us and got struck at a corner where it was barely wide enough for 2 cars. I’m not sure what happened but we saw a second double trailered truck stopped in the traffic!! It was quite the mess and we were very thankful to be going in the opposite direction!! We made a stop at a grocery store and then got back to our Airbnb around 5pm! It was a really good visit and we all enjoyed Lucca!

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.