Vogue Hotel Arezzo

... paysage est tres beau, comme dans toute la toscane!!

dans les attraction principale , il y avais le duomo, quelque eglies plus modestes, mais chacune avais un petit quelque chose a voir. puis il y a les ruines d'une anciene arena romaine.

Apres une heure de bus dans un paysage montagneux remplis de vignoble et de plantattion d'olivier, nous somme arrive a "Greve in chianti" en toscane. Malheureusement pour nous, la saisons des visites de vignobles est terminee. Nous avons quand meme marche jusqu'au chateau montefioralle. Une fois en haut de la cote, on avait une belle vue sur les environs et puis apres avoir marcher au travers du chateau, nous avonas repris la route du village ...

From Chianti went south to the Le Crete region. The drive provided us with more quintessential Tuscan scenery. We stayed overnight in Asciano as we could not make it to Montalcino before dark. We had vowed not to drive in the dark as the small windy roads and excessively erratic Italian drivers are not good for our nerves!

Next stop Radda in Chianti and the drive there through the Chianti countryside was sublime!!! The rolling hills lined with yellow and red vines and olive trees. It was like looking at natures own patchwork quilt. We found a park at the bottom of the village and went in search of the tourist office to get a map for tomorrow's hike. The tourist office though was closed, only opened from 10.30 to 12.30 nice work if you can get it!! So we went off for a stroll around ...

... there are more locals than tourists and every one likes to get out and about and socialise.
Jane manged to root out an 80 year old gold watch which belonged to the shopkeeper's uncle.


We wandered in to a terrific display of old radio and movie equipment dating back to Marconi. John & Pat will appreciate the photos.

For our last night we went to ...

On a drizzly morning we set off in the Panda and in an hour and or so got spat off the Autostrada at 130kmh!
Only about 80km further than we needed to go, so we followed a few back roads to arrive at the hillside town of Cortona.
After parking below the town's walls we were greeted by a posse of cats.
Guess what? Jane has bought another bag. Apparently two was clearly not enough, so now she has to carry the extra one.
The sun finally came out and we found ...

... sights. Besides not getting into Uffizi - I was also disappointed we didn't have more time in Florence. It's an absolute fabulous place with way too many things to see and do within a 1 ½ day time frame. I digress. So I'm sitting on the side of some road in the middle of Tuscany whimpering while Dave scrambles to find us a place overnight (poor me, right?!). He jumps onto the laptop and goes to hotels.com and finds a place in Arezzo. Great ...

... with strait sugar while all these healthy runners were running behind us. We started walking towards the Piti Palace to see some garden that was supposed to be nice. It was about 30 minutes walk from the square. We decided to play "paparazzi for a day". We had a contest who could take a picture of the hottest chick. Walking around in Florence in those squares is like walking around in the Quad at SWT on a nice spring day. Cute girls in summer dresses everywhere. That contest ...

We took the train to Arezzo early yesterday morning and walked around the town for a few hours, which was a really small "city" with some beautiful churches, nice caffes, and a really huge park called Parco il Prato. We had some trouble finding the park (Matthew: NICOLE had trouble finding the park....not me...I found it just fine once I stopped following Nicole), but once we got there it was beautiful, and we got lucky because yesterday ...

... the views of the Baptistery. With the bell in the bell tower, halfway up the top I am so out of breathe by the time we get to the top, not to mention the thigh muscles screaming in protest, that I take some time to rest and recover before heading outside to take in the view of the magnificent skyline. God I wish I had taken the time to have an ...