Under the Tuscan Sun

We have been to Italy many number of times, but never have done the "villa in Tuscany" thing and that was really an experience we wanted to have. So we rented a villa in the beautiful rolling hills of southern Tuscany. What's better than staying in a villa in Tuscany? A villa in Tuscany with dear friends! Our awesome friends from our OC days were doing an amazing summer-long European adventure with their family, and so we aligned schedules so we could enjoy a week in Tuscany together. It was so much fun! We enjoyed a great week of sun, relaxing at the villa, swimming, exploring the region's hilltop towns and of course the food! We also had plans to spend a couple of days with an old friend from Scott's high school who lives with her Italian husband and family in Torino. So we combined the whole trip into one grand Italian holiday. We flew into Milan (which is near to Torino and has great flights from London) and drove down to our villa in Tuscany the first day, the spent the week in Tuscany at the villa with our friends from California, then spent a couple of days seeing the highlights of Florence and Pisa before finishing with a couple of days in Torino and our flight back home out of Milan.

Our drive from Milan to our villa in southern Tuscany was meant to be a simple 5-hour affair.  But weather and traffic had other ideas, which turned our leisurely drive into a 10-hour harrowing experience.  Lots of bad weather and major traffic through some of Italy's trickiest roads and tunnels.  It was not relaxing, but we did manage to stop en route to the quaint city of Parma.  We're pretty big parma ham aficionados, so we were quite happy stopping here and of course a plate of Parma ham was an obligatory refreshment.  Just perfect!

A new day and lots of fun at the villa!  Our villa was just fantastic.  Perfectly old and rustic in all the right ways, with just the right touch of modern amenities (including much-needed air-con!) in the most gorgeous Tuscan setting.  It was a dream.  We spent over half our time just enjoying the villa, swimming, lounging, wandering the olive tree grove, dining al fresco, reading and just enjoying the beauty that surrounded us.  

Hilltoptowning, yes it's a word (we coined it, so it is!) was our main agenda item apart from being lazy at the villa.  It pretty much followed like this: find a cute hilltop town, wander the centre, get gelato, procure a smashing meal, more gelato, maybe some window shopping and call it a day.  That's might kind of touring!  Our first hilltop town exploit was the ever popular Cortona.  Visit-worthy in its own right, Cortona has gained more in popularity since Frances Mayes put it on the map with her villa reno and subsequent novels and movies depicting her story.  Having read all of her books and seen the movie,  I'll admit this was part of my fascination in coming here.  

Frances Mayes's villa, her real villa, portrayed in her book Under the Tuscan Sun.  It was tricky to find on the back hills of Cortona, but it was such a thrill for me to uncover. 

Our most major villa excursion was to Siena.  I had been here before, but the rest of the group had not.  It is a show-stopper and not to be missed, so I was happy to return.  What a wonderful day we had enjoying this lovely Tuscan city.  

Its not often you can find a good meal in the centre of the tourist activity, but we managed to find one of the best meals of our trip right in the middle of it all.  It was just incredible to enjoy such an amazing meal together in this extraordinary setting.

A quick, but delightful visit to Citta della Pieve, what hilltoptowning is all about!  

Over the border in Umbria is beautiful little Orvieto.  

We had a beautiful evening in Montepulciano, one of my favourite hilltop towns.  Such a gorgeous town with the most spectacular views.  

Eventually it was time to leave the villa and begin our trek back up to Milan.  We had a few days to see some things along the way.  Our first stop was the cute town of Pienza not far from Montepulciano.  

Next we hit up the very touristy, but quintessential Tuscan hilltop town of San Gimignano.

We finally made it to Florence for our two-day stop en route to Milan.  I had been to Florence twice before, but it is such an epic historical art rich city that I had to bring my family back.  During the summer it's hot and crowded with tourists, so we were glad our visit was short and sweet!  We managed to pack a lot into our short stay including sunsets over Ponte Vecchio, lots of gelato, ascending the bell tower at the Duomo and visiting the Academia museum to see Michelangelo's David.

Pisa was an easy stopover en route from Florence to Milan.  I had been here twice, and Madeleine once, so we left it up to the boys to decide if we'd make the stop.  Trevon was the only keen one in the group, but it was hard to say no to that cute, curious little guy.  And with such an easy detour coupled with previous knowledge on how best to do Pisa efficiently and well, we parked our car in a quiet neighbourhood not far from the Leaning and Tower and made our attack!  It's a tourist jungle out there!  We made quick but fun work of our visit, the obligatory pushing up the Leaning Tower photos, some gelato and we were off.  Trevon was genuinely excited to see just how much the tower leans, and it really does lean.  Totally worth it!  And as an aside I am one of the few who thinks Pisa, the town, is totally underrated.

The grand finale of our Italian adventure would bring us to another underrated Italian city, the beautiful Olympic host city of Tornio.  Our primary objective in coming here was to visit our friend Sonia.  She's a friend of Scott's from his high school days in Texas.  She has become a friend of mine with shared interests of travel, food, photography and Americans living and loving Europe.  I was so excited to meet her and for her to show us around lovely Torino.  It was a great day of seeing the grand sights of the city, gelato and granita tasting and getting better acquainted with this lovely friend.  We finished off the day with a fun dinner with more of their international family of friends.  It was really neat to be a part of that, and so grateful for Sonia's friendship.  Loved Torino and hope to return! 

On our drive out from Torino to Milan we made a quick stop to the charming village of Rivoli.  It was as if Pinocchio might amble on by.

And why not one final stop to see a bit of Milan before heading to the airport?  At little tired of the heat by this point (oh, but what I wouldn't do for it now!) and a little underwhelmed by another cathedral (the kids, not me!) we were not the eager bunch.  But we did end on a high note, with probably the best gnocchi of our lives for lunch.  

La Scala and Trevon with da Vinci, just as Trevon guessed!