Long Awaited Dream Trip To Italy – Travel and Day 1

For many years, we have been talking about a trip to Tuscany and we finally realized that at our ages, it was now or never so we began planning the trip.  Since we recently sold our small apartment complex, we had the funds that we could also take our kids so we planned a one month visit for us and invited each of the four kids to join us for a week.  Unfortunately, son Eric had just changed jobs and was unable to make the trip but we went for a month anyway.  Our plan included 19 days in Tuscany, 3 days just south in Umbria and the final week on the Sorrentine Peninsula (location of the Amalfi Coast) just south of Naples.  

Tuscany (Toscana) is the middle light blue area on the above map

Whereas most tourist seem to want to see things, we wanted to experience Italy, the Italians, and Italian wine (I’ve stood on the Great Wall Of China but mostly enjoyed my visit there while sitting at a picnic table and talking with a couple of Chinese college students). So, we plan to spend a couple of days in Siena and make two day trips to Florence to see the sites, but in Tuscany, we mostly want to go to wineries for a tour, a wine tasting, a meal, take cooking classes, and a drive through the very hilly Italian countryside.  I’ve known since July we were doing this and had plenty of time to whip myself into shape, but I failed miserably so I’ll just be a fat old man doing what I can do, but I know I’ll have a great time doing the things I most want to do.

After two pretty nice flights, we landed in Rome at 7:25 am on Sunday morning and this pic is of our first class cubicles where we could completely lay down to sleep.

After floundering around for about 30 minutes with terrible signage, we finally made it to the rental care place.  Following the normal very slow rental process, we easily got on the correct road and made the three hour drive north to Castellina in Chianti on a dark rainy day.  We checked in at the little Hotel Squarcialupi in downtown then made our way to the old family farmhouse called Agriturismo la Ferrozzola that is now used as the family home and rental apartments and it is surrounded by olive trees and vineyards.  So the Squarcialupi family has a hotel, a restaurant, a winery and wine shop, fresh pasta shop, and rental apartments. This is a shot of the main farm house, some of which was built in the 1500’s, taken from our apartment.

We are staying in a two BR apartment in a detached building below the main house and it was believed to be grain storage as its original purpose.  I believe the building walls must be about two feet thick and they are stone inside and out.

This is from the veranda of the vineyards and olive trees and the farm across the way is our destination for tomorrows cooking class.

The two-story apt. has the living area, master BR and bath downstairs and the upstairs has a BR and bath.

After settling into the apartment for a few minutes, we made the three-minute drive back to town for lunch at the Pizzeria il Fondaccio where we were at the end of the normal meal time on a Sunday afternoon so few customers were there.  It’s common for the main meal of the day to be the1-3:30 pm lunchtime meal with restaurants open from 7:30-9 pm for the evening meal.

We were started with some delicious bread to dip into olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Then Kathy ordered a cheese board, and Bev each went for pizza.  

The food was very good and the service was excellent with the server also being the pizza maker and after we ate, he insisted we have a little limoncello to cleanse our palettes. After the meal we went just up the street to the Squarcialupi Winey’s wine store and bought a bottle of Chianti Clasico DOCG Riserva 2020 to sip on at home (the Apt.).  Like many countries in Europe, the Italian wines have a rating system and DOCG is the highest – Kathy and I thought it was very good.

Even though I didn’t sleep on the plane, I managed to stay up until 8pm then had a nice 10 hour sleep that got my body on the local time.

Photos can be slightly enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

4/12-13/25 event dates