Visiting Italy: Tuscany

Finally, after weeks of excitedly waiting, it was time to go on holiday. I had spent the week writing lists and faffing over how to fit everything I wanted to take into our ridiculously small luggage limit (7.5kg of hold baggage each!? What?!)  but now it was time. The boyfriend and I were heading to Italy!

We were off for two weeks and had decided to travel around a little bit, so our trip involved a few days in the Tuscan countryside, a couple of days in Florence and a few more in Rome. It was going to be glorious!

We landed at Pisa airport and after a couple of short trains, we arrived in the small village of Rignano Sull'Arno that was to be our home for our Tuscan stay. It was beautifully hot, the sun beating down a sizzling 35^oc, and, after setting off walking for all of about 10mins, we found ourselves to be a tad lost.  Wandering around, we discovered just how hilly a tiny village can manage to be (very!), before eventually and exhaustedly finding the gates to our accommodation.

We had booked all our accommodation for the trip through Air B&B (basically a site where people offer up their spare rooms to tourists for very reasonable prices) and we seemed to have struck gold. Our very friendly host Leonardo (how much more Italian can you get?) showed us into our own little stone cottage which had a little sitting room, kitchen, a large bedroom and a rather unexpectedly modern bathroom. He showed us around, recommended his brother’s pizzeria, and then left us to inspect the pool.

The view from the pool was amazing. The ground to the side of the pool just dropped away and suddenly we had this beautiful view over the Tuscan countryside. We could see for miles and miles all around! I was instantly very happy and knew where I’d be spending all of my time!

Tuscany was wonderful. I managed to read an entire book (something I haven’t done in a long time), get a tan (something I haven’t done in even longer), eat some great pizza (Leonardo’s bro’s place turned out to be really good!) and just generally catch up on some well needed sleep. I was in bliss!

Soon however, it was time to go to Rome…