Well, I guess you are wondering why a post on travelling to Tuscany now, with all the restrictions that are in place. To answer your question, well, because I had some time to spend at home and decided to go through my old pictures. And when I found the Tuscany collection, instantly I felt like I was going back on a journey there, without leaving my house. So, I guess now it’s time for travel stories and travel plans, as the actual travel itself might have to wait a little bit more. That is why I am inviting you to travel with me to Tuscany, from the comfort of your couch 🙂 If you decide to bring along on this journey a glass of your favourite wine, even better, cause we will also go for wine tasting while we are there! So once upon a time in Tuscany…
There was plenty of sunshine, wine, delicious food, amazing art, breathtaking sceneries, and wine again… The key ingredients of your tuscan adventure. This part of Italy is amazing for slowing down the pace and enjoying all the beautiful things you will find here!
Our tuscan adventure begun in Florence, an amazing city for the art lovers, for the food lovers and the wine lovers all together. Such a busy place! I could have been reading all the online reviews that were saying that Florence is busy, but I was not able to imagine the real situation. Yes it is very very busy!
We arrived in Florence at Santa Maria Novela train station and from there we walked down to our booked hotel apartment close to the Duomo. We booked this so that we would be in the middle of everything. However, if you choose to stay in the centre, be prepared for a lot of noise from outside even at night, as Florence almost never sleeps. Probabily the streets are silent one or two hours before the sunrise.
From 7.00 – 8.00 you can already find a lot of tourist groups queueing up for the museums and the Duomo.
First day we’ve spent it visiting the Boboli Gardens, just because we could not really adapt to the crowds anywhere else.
In may, the Boboli Gardens were beautiful! A lot of sculptures, fountains, steps, alleys all lost between centuries old oak trees and beautiful blooming flowers of spring.
It is said that this place even was as source of inspiration for the Versailles gardens! You can even find here a Large Grotto. The Large Grotto is decorated with sculptures having amazing details, that will keep you looking closer to spot more.
After you had your share of Boboli Gardens, most probabily you would like to head downtown for one of the best treats Florence has to offer: gelato! Try to avoid the street vendors that sell mountains of bright coloured ice cream, and go for the ones that sell it in small shops, because this is how usually you will discover the homemade authentic gelato!
To make your meal planning easier, usually lunch is served around 13.00 and dinner around 20.00, but you can grab a bite to eat on the go also at different hours of the day. For a little snack, Mercato Centrale should be the perfect place, as you can find anything here, from cheese, pizza, steaks, burgers, wine, coffee, you name it. A little foodie heaven! Make sure to save room for the bistecca in the evening!
Speaking of bistecca, this is one of the signature dishes of Florence. If you come here and you like steaks, you should definetly try it! Bistecca alla fiorentina is a huge T-bone steak, full of flavour and made for sharing it with your friends, as it usually comes as a piece of 2 up to 4 kg of meat!
I am pretty sure I know some people that could manage to eat it without sharing, but usually it takes a foodie champion to do that… Also, if you are not a big fan of rare cooked steaks, I guess you won’t really appreciate it’s true value and better go for something else from the menu.
We stayed 2 nights in Florence, and then moved just outside the city, in one of the old Medici Villas (the Medici family was the wealthiest family in Italy in the Renaissance period, some say their chef even invented gelatto!)
Getting out of the busy city was a big plus for us, as we needed a bit more of the “dolce vita” way of italian living, in translation, a bit of rest, wine, relax in the sun and some good food.
Our stay at Villa Medicea di Lilliano was perfect for that. We arrived here in the afternoon, and the ladies of the house helped me organise a surprise party for my friends, as they both had their birthdays that week. We had a homecooked dinner with wine tasting, and a tour of the amazing villa!
Our hosts wanted to make the final touches to the room decoration and we had a bit of time to take a tour of our villa with two bedrooms and a nice private terrace (I think they spoke with someone and arranged also the nicest sunlight for this tour!).
The light was perfect for pictures, so we went to the reception to ask if we could just go for a litttle photo shoot around the garden. We had the best guide for this tour, that started with a chilly prosecco glass on the amazing terrace of the villa, where they usually organise weddings.
By the time we saw the garden, the rooms, the wine cellar, and we found out some great info about the wines they produced and the Medici family, we were already well acquainted with their prosecco!
We went for the three or four course dinner (by the end of it I personally couldn’t count anymore) and wine tasting/ food pairing experience. It was di-wine! Got a small introduction on tuscan wines, like Chianti Clasico and Vinsanto and we were already looking forward to our next days of wine tasting experiences.
If you would like to go to Villa Medicea di Liliano, keep in mind that they don’t have a restaurant there, you can only arrange the dinner with wine tasting by booking in advance, and also the breakfast is self catering – they do provide a very nice basket of fresh ingredients for you to cook a nice meal in the privacy of your villa. But if you have a car, you have some options for eating out around the place.
We rented a car before leaving from Florence in order to get to the villa and also to be able to move around next days for the Tuscany tours.
Usually, so that everyone can drink, you can organise wine tasting tours on the bike. We somehow found it difficult and expensive to rent bikes, so we decided to go with the car and sacrifice one of us per day to be the designated driver 🙁
Other ways to go for the tours are renting a car and driver, going for a guided one day tour, or ,like us, a DIY wine cellar hopping day with the car, with the obvious downside that one has to drive.
There are numerous places where you can go for the tastings, but after trying 3 or 4 of them, usually it’s enough for a few days. With that in mind, we booked three tasting in three different regions that are actually a must – Montalcino (to try the famous Brunello di Montalcino and to also visit the town, and it’s surroundings, as it is part of the Val d’Orcia UNESCO patrimony ), Montepulciano (for Montepulciano di Abruzzo wines) and Chianti ( for a taste of the Chianti Clasico).
We found out that visiting more than two wineries per day is not the best deal, as you will be over saturated with new information and also tired from the road trip. The list of wine cellars to visit here is huge, I won’t go into it, but my favourite was Castiglion del Bosco Winery – in the Montalcino area. We went there to taste their famous Brunello di Montalcino, but instead we were amazed of other wines we discovered – their Prima Pietra and their Vinsanto are full of charm and flavour! Remember that you have to book your tour in advance, it was quite easy to do it online and they always replied to our mails.
Their tour is very informative and also their wineyard is located in the most amazing scenery! You can also find here a hotel, a golf course, and I guess a lot more we didn’t end up discovering, because we discovered their wines first!
We had some other wine tastings booked for the day, but we realised we were thinking about this tour at a very hurried pace and we decided to slow down and postpone them for the next days. Instead, we went to visit Sienna, and Volterra, and we got lost in the tuscan countryside. And what a good decision that was!
Volterra An old bike at the entrance in Volterra Infinite Tuscany A priest opened the church just for us to take some photos Sienna Piazza del Campo Tuscan lifestyle
It was an amazing tuscan experience, and now when I look back, as someone was saying the last days “we were happy and we didn’t know it”. I guess we knew it to some extent…
Now, while we are all at home, and we are working on our future travel plans, ticking the boxes of our UNESCO patrimony sights to visit, or completing our list with new travel destinations, or maybe subscribing to new travel blogs for new ideas (hope you will consider reading also ours, as we have plenty of ideas too), I am sure now, when we will start travelling again, we will appreciate more all the adventures that come our way.
As my wine glass is almost finished too, I hope you enjoyed our little Tuscany trip from the comfort of our couch!