What Did Jolene do in... Tuscany 2007
Trip Start
May 09, 2007
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3
5
Trip End
May 17, 2007
Tuscany,
Italy
Monday, May 14, 2007
Leaning Tower of Pisa
We first visited Pisa and took a picture of the leaning tower. The funny thing was Ashley and I did not know how to reverse the car till we got to Pisa. We were stuck in a jam and had to get the guy that our car was blocking to help us with the reverse gear. Duh! All you need to do is lift the lever under the stick. The guy luckily had a good sense of humor.Off we go to Livorno. We wanted to see the ocean. Livorno is supposed to be a port south of Pisa. We stopped at Livorno and sunbathed for an hour while planning our next route. We ended up driving towards Voltera. On our way there, we saw the most fantastic ocean view ever. The waters were so blue and people were sunbathing on the rocks next to the waters. The weather was perfect. Everything was just perfect. I took over the wheel and missed a lot of the nice views because I had to dodge some nasty Italian drivers who did not appreciate me driving at 20km above speed limit.
Tuscany
Driving towards Voltera and away from the water was equally breathtaking. It was difficult for me to concentrate on driving on the narrow road leading up to the hills while admiring the beautiful scenery.
San Gimignano
I wanted to visit San Gimignano, especially after Brad showed me his picture book of the cute little Italian city. We got there, parked and walked around the city. It is so cute! The city is filled with stone bricked walls and cute shops. After San Gimignano, we drove towards the Chianti region.
Typical house in Tuscany
The drive was dangerous but worth the trouble. Hollywood did not exagerate Under The Tuscan Sun at all. If anything, it did not do it justice. Driving past the vineyards is like driving through heaven. I felt like I was part of a painting on a wall. It was perfect. Ashley and I wanted to get some authentic Italian food at a restaurant in Chianti, preferably one on an off-beaten road somewhere. We had to knock on a couple of unanswered doors before we stumbled upon this pretty restaurant next to a vineyard. I can't say it enough--it was perfect! The menu was definitely foreign.
Strange menu
The waitress spoke good English and explained everything on the menu one by one--pigeon meat, goat meat, rabbit meat, etc. Yikes! Maybe a little more than I had bargained for. But we ordered pasta with ham and got some side dishes. The fried mushrooms were delicious. In fact, everything was splendid. We got the house wine with our meal. Yes, Jolene had alcohol and survived. But I did not drive home. :) We both wanted so badly to get lost in Chianti because we were tired of annoying tourists, but always ended up on a road somewhere with a Florence sign on it. But when we wanted to get back to Florence after dinner, we actually got lost. The funny thing was, there were signs saying, Chiusa, and both of us thought we were in Chiusa city. Well, I found out later that the word means closed. Hahaha.... we were driving around Florence for over an hour thinking we were lost! Joke was on us.
Getting the car back to the garage was quite a feat. We did not want to pay the extra 20 euros for returning the car after 9pm and wanted to park somewhere free. Well we quickly learned that parking is never free in Florence. The road signs with tow trucks on them certainly made us think twice before we parked on any street. Italian road signs are certainly illustrative. I guess a picture really speaks a thousand words. Before parking we had to fill up the tank. Another surprise awaits us at the gas pump. Which pump do we use? How do we get our money in? We had to estimate exactly how much gas we needed in advance and slot in euro bills into this ghetto machine. We ended up with a little too much money in the machine. Luckily we only lost 1 euro. What a night!
