Hi Everyone. Here we are one week in Tuscany. We have the most incredible villa! An old stone house with 2 apartments. Just yesterday the lower apartment was rented to a family from Switzerland, but until now we have had the place to ourselves. The large patio facing east and the morning sun this time of year is divine and the large stone patio overlooks the soft green hills of Tuscany. We are a short walk for a delightful village that has all the ammenities we need (except an internet) There are hiking trails so we have done a lot of walking and actually have only once ventured further afield. Thursday we spent the day in Piza. Marian wanted to see the Leaning Tower and I will say we were all more impressed than expected. The guide books tend not to play it up so our expectations were moderate. It is really quite impressive and it does lean quite alarmingly. Amazing that it has been doing so for centuries. It was a delightful day! We did arrive here ready to relax. Paris was a whirlwind and we weren't settled in Spain, so settling in to this spacious and relaxing place has been a bit of heaven. Joyce is quite clear that she doesnàt want to go anywhere else, but Marian and I find ourselves torn between wanting to just "be" and to explore. We've decded that tomorrow the 2 of us are going to head of the Cinque Terre just north of us. It will be about 3 hours on train and bus so we will overnight. Cinque Terre is a group of medieval villages on the coast of Italy that are a world heritage site. We might also go to Siena as we think we can manage that in a day. Then on Saturday morning early we are off to St. Chinian in the South of France. We have a villa (apartment really) booked for only 1 week, but have 4 weeks in France. I am truly loving Italy and think I would love to come back. So if any of you are interested in the next 2 or 3 years of renting a villa in Tuscany I'd love to join you. Let me backtrack. We were in Pamplona for a couple of days and then headed into what we thought were the pyrenees. Well, they were, but aparently the Atlantic Pyrenees - more hills than mountains. We found ourselves in a very small village on the edge of a park (how lucky is that!) OUr accommodation was cheap and sparce, but none of us had the interest in searching anything else so we ended up to our surprise staying a week. The park itself was wonderful. On one of the hikes we found ourselves in the most magical forest. The energy was quite palpable. It was our last day in Spain and we all felt quite full and blessed. The travel itself we are finding tough. It is more difficult that we anticipated to get information and make arrangements to get from place to place. We are now into devising our exit plans as soon as we arrive somewhere. In the end it took us 2 days to get from The village in Spain to our village in Italy. And I am meaning 2 days without beds. Actually we did get a hotel room in San Sabastian enroute and then when we went to buy our train tickets we discovered that the information that we had been given regarding the bus schedule was not correct and instead of having to get the at 8 a.m. it was midnight.
