Joey and Jill’s Travel Blog

Hello all!

So, Joey and I have been in Florence for 3 days now and it is quite the experience. As we said previously, we found an apartment which has been a great releif because we have a place we can cook food and that saves loads of money. We have just kind of been bumbling around Florence except yesterday we took a chance and went on a wine tasting tour to Tuscany.

We went to 3 small medieval villages including the most recognizable name–Siena. It was so amazingly beautiful! Especially coming from Florence which, don’t get me wrong is breathtaking but it is a big city with lots of traffic and funky smells. So, to be able to get away and up into the country with fresh air and calmness…it was a huge blessing!

So, we arrived at the tour office around 8 or so and left in a van with about 9 other people plus our guide, Stefan, and our driver. As we drove through Florence our awesomely funny German guide explained a lot of the history and architecture to us. It was really interesting. Then, as we got further from the city he explained more about the places we were going and the wines we would be drinking and we also learned a lot of olives and olive oil…like ALWAYS use extra virgin!

We arrived at our first stop. This little medieval city atop a hill called San Gimignano. It is a quaint little walled city with amazing views of Tuscany. Here Joey and I got ripped off for some overpriced esspresso…but everything is overpriced so whatever. We walked around the little town and then about an hour later we got back on the van and headed for the next and most important stop.

We then arrived at this little vineyard called San Denato. Here we got straight to business. We headed down to the cellar for lunch and vino. Joey and I filled our plates with olives, cheese, farro salad, procuitto, more cheese, and lots of salads with olive oil. We sat down and filled our then empty wine glasses with Chianti and started in. Pretty soon we had eaten all we could and drank quite a bit of chianti. We then were served 3 different kinds of Grappa and then a desert wine with cantucci (kind of a hard almond biscotti thing.) So, we were having a great time by this point and met some new friends from North Carolina and we headed into another cellar where the winemaker came to talk to us about how the wine is made and how olives are picked and whatnot. We then headed into their little mercado where they sold their own wine and olive oil. Joey and I purchased a little bottle of the chianti reserva. We found out that reserva means aged at least 2 years. So, then we left that cute little vineyard and headed for Siena. We made one other quick stop after this for a capucino or whatever and Joey and I thought it would be a good idea to try an olive fresh from the tree. Not such a good idea. They are disgusting…a flavor there are no words for. So, warning to you all…don’t eat olives from an olive tree.

We walked into Siena and one of the most beautiful plazas we have ever seen. It was huge and very impressive. Here we laid in the sunshine, enjoyed some gelato and chatted with our new friends. It was the most beautiful day and we had the best time. Hands down my favorite day yet!

But, we have posted some pics for y’all to see here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9547617@N02/sets/72157608304270903/

Well we miss you all very much and can’t wait to be back in Oregon to show you all more pics of this amazing trip! We will hopefully be off to Venice, Rome, and Pisa soon and then we head back to London and then back to the states and the land of public bathrooms!

Much love!

J&J

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.