The Streits

Oh, Tuscany. Everyone said you would be lovely and you were. Here is part 2 of our Italian holiday recap. If you missed Part 1, check the sights from Cinque Terre and Florence out here.

After getting to and around Cinque Terre and Florence via train, we picked up a rental car at the Florence airport at the conclusion of our stay so we could drive around the Tuscan hills for a couple days. First of all, let me just say that driving/navigating around the streets of Florence was awful. Between Geoff's driving and my feeble attempts to navigate us via Google maps, we were close to not speaking to each other by the time we finally got outside the city. What is it about driving and getting lost multiple times over that brings out the worst in people, or at least in me??? Fortunately, we really like each other so we quickly made up. :)

Part of what makes Tuscany Tuscany are all the little Italian villages smattered across the landscape. Throughout our two days in Tuscany, we visited several of them. The first one we stopped at while making our way towards Siena was San Gimignano, which charmed us with its history, medieval streetscapes and enchanting rural setting overlooking the Tuscan hills.

San Gimignano was once known as the "city of beautiful towers". Here are 3 of the remaining 14 towers in the village, which date back to the 14th century.

Piazza della Cisterna

I absolutely love these medieval, walled cities. My imagination runs wild trying to visualize what life once must have looked like there

Next stop, Siena: such a cool medieval city! It's another walled city, with most of the walls that enclose the city still being the original ones built back in the 11th century. If you ignored the modernization such as spotting stores like the Gap and Apple, it's really like you're stepping back into time. Siena is also built on a hill, giving it extra dimensions up and down as we meandered around the narrow alleys.

Piazza del Campo - the heart of the city

This piazza is the location for the famous Palio, a medieval horse race tradition that occurs every summer. Thousands of spectators pack the piazza to watch the race.

After exploring Siena in the morning, we hopped in our rental car and spent the afternoon driving around the beautiful Tuscan hills, spotting vineyards and olive farms everywhere we looked.

The manager at our hotel in Siena recommended we stop off at the castle below for a tour. When we reached it, the girls were napping in the car, so we decided to drive on for awhile longer before circling back. Well, when we arrived back a couple hours later, we noticed a sign at the parking lot indicating the last tour of the day was 4:00. Time on the clock in the car was 3:53. We sprinted (or as much as you can sprint with a 1 and 4 year old) up a hill to the ticket office, arriving a couple minutes after 4:00. Too late. The castle doors were closed. Those Italians are timely people, I tell ya! Despite the frustration of being turned away, we were at least able to explore the grounds a bit which gave the girls the chance to briefly run free.

Good morning, Siena. (view from our hotel bathroom!)

The next day, on our way back to Florence to return our rental car before hopping on a train for Venice, we stopped in the village of Monteriggioni. A classic Italy town dating to the 12th century, we were eager to wander around this village. Actually, the real reason we stopped off was to buy Tuscan souvenirs while we were still technically in Tuscany. Which, as usual, proved to be a stressful event as we attempted to keep two very curious little people from knocking over shelves of expensive vases and other breakables in the shops.