Spring Break: Tuscany
Planning getaways for all of us is a balance of opposites in a way. I love adventure of travel and seeing and learning new things, while Matt would love to just rent a home and stay put for a whole week. The kids are along for the ride, and I try to plan things they will love too. I remember being a young teen and dreaming of traveling to Europe one day and I often laugh when I think how commonplace all this traveling is for my kids. “Look kids, old church,” is something we say on the regular with a smile. As I looked at places to go for our upcoming Spring Break, we were ready for somewhere warm and sunny and Italy felt dreamy. Matt had traveled there for work, but I had never been. Lots of Matt’s coworkers recommended getting a villa where we could have authentic Italian food and just relax…Matt was sold, and I knew there would be lots to explore. Win-win.
I found the perfect villa for us on Airbnb, right outside Florence, with the most stunning views and a waterfall pool that looked dreamy. Plus the owner offered to cook authentic Tuscan dishes for us while we were there. Our itinerary quickly fell into place with one day in Pisa, one in Florence, and one in Siena with a day to just chill at the villa before driving home.
It was about a 9 hour drive from our home in Germany. On the day we left it was raining for hours, and then a total blizzard white out at one point while crossing the Alps on the Swiss-Italian border. I was worried I’d have to stop, or slide off into a snowy Alpine abyss. Once we crossed the Italian border though, the sun was shining.
We stopped in Cremona to see the Violin Museum (which happened to be closed on a Monday, just my luck) and explored the town.
And what are the chances? As we pulled into a gas station to fill up our car, Nola’s elementary school teacher stepped out of the car next to us! It’s such a small world.
She’s amazing and it was such a fun coincidence.
After Cremona we made the rest of the drive down to Florence to find our villa. We finally got off the main roads and onto tiny village roads, then onto dirt roads through picturesque olive tree orchards and vineyards. I’m not going to lie, the roads were rough and so tiny, barely big enough for one car. I wondered what on earth we had gotten into. Finally, at the end of the road, we found our villa for the week.
We arrived just before sunset and were greeted and welcomed by the sweet Italian family that owned the property. In broken English they showed us around and shared with us the story of the house that they had lovingly restored. The foundations and underground cellar with massive pottery for storing food were dated back to the 1400s. The pool was gorgeous and the kids couldn’t wait to jump in…although it was way colder in Italy than we had hoped it would be.
After they left, we needed to find a grocery store to pick up some dinner for our first night. I drove down the steepest, scariest, tiny road, around sharp corners and occasionally an oncoming car, to the nearest village, Montelupo Fiorentino — famous for Tuscan pottery. We walked into a small grocer and picked up some local foods before making the treacherous drive back. I was white-knuckling it all the way. (After a week at the villa I did get better at the driving, but it is such a different world than what I’m used to in the US.)
Something I love that Matt does whenever we travel is he looks for movies that are filmed or set in the place that we are going for us to have something fun to watch at the end of the day when we are back at the hotel or place we are staying. For this trip to Italy, he had The Italian Job, the whole Da Vinci Code series, and Luca ready for us to enjoy. It was really fun all week to see the locations and say, “hey we just saw that!”
The kids are old enough now, too, that we can really enjoy playing cards all together and going on longer walks. On our last day where we just stayed at the villa we took a walk all the way out to where the paved road started, a few miles, and I noticed that the stones in the dirt roads were the white and pink and green marble we had been seeing all week in Pisa, in Florence and Siena. I grabbed a big chunk to wash off and bring home to remember. The views and scenery out in the country side were everything I imagined.
And the food! Oh the food! Our hosts had given us a menu of all the things we could order for our dinners and I decided we would just try everything over the course of the week. It was amazing to eat their authentic recipes, delivered in the dishes they were cooked in. We tried rabbit, and Tuscan peppered beef, Lasagna (so good and so different from American versions), olive pate, Florentine sweet bread and other desserts. There was Pesto pasta, and eggplant and Ribolita — I loved because it was so different but the kids didn’t care for it…it’s a Tuscan bread soup. And oh! The cheeses and local honeys and jams! It was all so delicious and such a memory to be able to try it all. We also asked if we could purchase some of their own olive oil, made from the trees that surrounded us and came home with 2 liters that we will savor in the coming months.
I’ll write up separate posts for each of our days out to Pisa, Florence and Siena. It really was the most beautiful week together with memories I don’t want to forget.
