Among vineyards and local haunts in Chianti

Since we already had two toasters when we moved in together, we didn't ask for one as a wedding present. Instead, we wanted a contribution to our honeymoon, which we planned to spend in Tuscany and Cinque Terre in Italy. So first a big thank you to family and friends who made this dream trip possible.

Usually when we travel, we book travel and accommodation ourselves, we google, search and ask friends for tips. This time we went old school and walked down to the local travel agency. Here we met Pirjo, who turned out to be a real Italy fanatic and who had lots of good tips. We told her what we had in mind and came up with a great proposal that we took right off. It was a week in Tuscany and a week in Liguria at Cinque Terre. This post is about our first week and here you can read about our second week.

We flew to Pisa where we stayed for two nights which was just enough to discover the city. It's a big enough city for a weekend trip and besides the lovely weather there is a lot to see and do, the leaning tower if nothing else.

The second day we picked up our rental car to head on to lovely Tuscany. We had actually thought that we would rent bikes and cycle around between vineyards as many people seem to do. However, I don't know if these people are very brave or tired of life. Tuscany has only narrow winding roads and everyone drives at full speed. We were also told that "you take the curves better after a couple of glasses of wine", which is why we soon cancelled the idea of bikes. One of us simply had to take the stay in Tuscany a little more dry. Luckily we stayed at a winery anyway. 🙂

Below you can see pictures of the small village of Volterra which is about half way to Tuscany. This spring had been the rainiest in living memory so it was still very quiet in the area, but we were incredibly lucky and only had one rainy day before the spring sun came out and gave us a fantastic weather the whole trip. After all the rain, it was also incredibly green and lush everywhere.

Our travel agent Pirjo had booked us into the vineyard Castelvecchi in the centre of the Chianti area. This old castle with a beautiful garden in the middle of the rolling countryside we had never found ourselves and we could not have got a better accommodation. The food was really good, the service super and the location was perfect for getting around the various villages in Tuscany.

So what do you do in Tuscany? It's not the place for those on a diet. Here you eat and drink well most of the time. In addition to our own winery, we visited a number of other farms that had really good restaurants. While Castelvecchi was more rustic and familiar, there were farms where you got to put on your fancy shoes and enjoy more artistic creations. Or you might end up at the local pizzeria in the square and eat the best pasta dish you've ever had in your life. The latter happened one day when we were out exploring the various small villages in the Chianti area. We had fallen completely out of step with the food and were suddenly very hungry at five in the afternoon but there was not an open restaurant in sight. Necessity has no law, we thought, and the choice then fell on the somewhat boring shack in the square in Gaiole in Chianti, which was the only one open. Wow, what a place! We were first persuaded to a "small" starter, which you can see in one of the pictures below, which was then followed by a really good dinner, a truffle pasta for me and a beef fillet for Henrik. Even though we were sitting outside, the truffle smell was heavy over the neighbourhood when the waitress came out with the food. The camera was therefore completely forgotten in favour of the good food.

If you get tired of wine and lush hills, Tuscany has two beautiful cities to visit, Florence and Siena. We chose to save Florence for a trip of our own that we hope will happen soon and instead headed for Siena which is like a Florence in miniature. We were only here for the day and the city is just big enough to stroll around for a day. Don't miss the beautiful cathedral Duomo di Siena or Piazza del Campo whose large square is the site of an annual horse race.

Our first week of our honeymoon was almost over and we can both say that Tuscany really is a wonderful place to travel to. With our bags full of good wine, we now travelled on by train to Liguria to hike away a few kilos of food and to get new nature experiences.