Lorena Hotel Grosseto

... we need to be in Morocco by the 18th Dec as Kim promised me I would have surfing on my birthday - yay!!!! Then we have Hayden and Gill joining us for Christmas in Marrakesh - whoo hoo! It was text message city in Scooby this morning as we got another text this time from Gill in London giving us the fantastic news that I had been accepted as a British citizen. I had lodged my papers before we left London but did not expect to hear so soon as processing times can be up to 6 months!

... hot soak was for our still achey muscles the rotten egg smell was hard for Kim to bear. She was able to block her nose and only breathe through her mouth so she did not gag - poor thing. A new item appeared on the menu tonight - delicious Tuscan pork and chicken sausages (the best ever!) with cous cous ala Gill, all washed down with a local sparkling Rose - yum!!!!! We thought we would have leftovers but no they were so good we gobbled up all 10!

Down the road from Montalcino we popped into St Antimo Abbey where the local monks say their (7!!) daily prayers in Georgian chants. We caught part of the 12.45pm prayers and enjoyed some down time while listening the chanting. The afternoon was glorious and once again we were in tshirts, so we made the most of it and had a picnic in the sun beside the Abbey.

... harvest, so were tried a tipple from a "young" 2004 bottle, which was a 5 star harvest year. For such a world famous wine I was not overly impressed. They say the flavor develops with age so maybe I should have splashed out and bought a bottle of 1997...but the price tag was above our daily budget...oh well can't try everything.

... visited, it has managed to prevent overbuilding of either hotels or homes. It reeks, if anything, of old money. The Queen of the Netherlands has her summer villa here, as does the oil heiress and jewellery designer Elsa Peretti. In other words, those who have
everything can't get enough of the place.

Villa Oriente: where Dominic Lawson stayed

... on a clear day, especially in September and October. This property is available for weekly rental from the beginning of March until the end of October. For further information please click on the link below:-

http://www.isolarossa.co .uk/isolarossa/laquercia/index.html

... of wine tasting might be a good antidote to a surfeit of culture. A visit to La Parrina just north of Orbetello is different kind of aesthetic experience. This 18th century Tuscan estate produces, not only wine, but also vegetables, fruit, cheese, olive oil and honey. There is a wonderful farm shop there which people drive all the way from Rome to visit (despite the fact the estate has two shops there) where you can sample all the produce. Tours of the cheese making ...

... that would probably be quiet at night so we didnt stay around too much and were planning to driving to Siena afterwards.

In goes the address to the campsite and we head off..... hmmm.... the address was right but we pt too much trust in Harriet. We start to drive down the little steep streets which seemed weird, especially after we had come up a normal main road. Then ...

... with barely enough room for our luggage and us, the room is sparse and the bathroom the size of a postage stamp. The matrimonial room is two twin beds pushed together and it seems to us that it is designed this way because the only position to do it in is the missionary position. We dump our stuff, eat the lunch we packed and hit the streets, which took us a half an hour to walk around the entire town. It is relatively quiet now ...

... Once inside, the boatmen who row you through the 1.3-meter high entrance sing Italian love songs that reverberate off the cave walls. Our next stop was the town of Amalfi. The journey there along the Amalfi Coast was the reason we had traveled to this part of Italy. From our coveted seats on the western-facing side of a public bus, we could see the high cliffs rising from the Mediterranean's crystal-blue waters and the homes and villages carefully crafted ...