Fagiolari Panzano

Great B&B Wondrful food & a pool!

May 22 - We leave Sorrento for a 5 hour road trip to Tuscany. The drive is beautiful through the Italian hills (mountains for this Kansan) and it's interesting to see the old towns strategically located on top of hills for defense. It looks like most had walls around them in the early days but have grown outside the walls now. For lunch we stop in one of those towns, Orvieto, which is just a few km off the Autostrade (turnpike). Gary and Bonnie had stopped here before, and they were shocked t...

May 23 - We get up and leave at 7 a.m., before the Fagiolari breakfast, which starts at 8, for a day-long road trip to Firenze (Florence) about 40 km north of here. Florence is another magnificent Italian city with a glorious past. We visit the Uffizi Gallery with its collection of famous Primitive and Renaissance paintings and sculptures including original works by Leonardo Di Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and many others. Bonnie had made reservations on line more than a month before so we d...

May 24 - We've been keeping a pretty frenzied pace (yesterday we were going non-stop 7 a.m. to midnight) so we decide to take a day to sleep in and take it easy. After breakfast at 9 I took some time to download pictures and write in this journal while Lynnette did some laundry for us. (The plan to take only one carry-on bag per person has worked fine for us with rinsing out some things to dry overnight and now a major laundry day. Our car is larger than average but the luggage compartment is...

May 25 - Day trip to San Gimignano, Volterra, and Siena. We take off to visit three Chianti district towns in the Provence of Siena. Our first stop is 40 km away in San Gimignano, a small and very picturesque town with 17 towers and a wall built in the 13th century. Most of the towers were built to defend the town, but at least some are now bell towers and we're treated to some brief bell tower concerts while we're there. We walk around the winding little streets and have a nice lunch at a re...

May 26 - Day trip to Pisa. We visit the most famous tower in the world, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The tower is in a walled compound that includes a giant church and a large baptismal building, all 3 of which share an architectural style, even though they were built over a period of 2 or 3 centuries. The area seems like the biggest single tourist attraction we have been to with hundreds of vendors selling food, trinkets, souvenirs and other junk as well as guys walking around selling fake Rol...