July 11th Best of Tuscany

We had a tour today that we had pre-booked through Viator for the Best of Tuscany.  We ate breakfast at the hotel before setting off to meet at the train station at 8:30.  We first headed to Siena and was lead around the town by a wonderful tour guide named Carolina.

She told us about the Palio horserace that they have every July 2nd & another on August 16th that brings all the districts of the are together to race against each other.  You can see scenes of  it in the Jmes Bond movie Quantam of Solice.  What was really funny is Roger had just been watching the movie the night before on his I-pod and when we were standing in the city square he said that it looked like where the movie had taken place.

The town has a great medieval look about it but the topper is the Duomo (church).  The artwork inside is outstanding.  There are a couple of Michelangelo sculptures that he did right before he started the Statue of David and works by Donatello & Bernini.

 

We then headed to a private organic farm/winery where we toured the property and the winery before we had a wonderful lunch and wine tasting.

First we had a white wine with our Brochette.  Then with our pasta with ragu sauce we had a red wine, followed by a salad and then for dessert we had biscotti dipped that we dipped in grappa, which was a grape liquore. The only problem is they do not believe in air-conditioning  or ceiling fans so it was very warm.

When we left  there we headed to San Gimignano.  It is a wonderfully preserved medieval town.

  This is where we got the World's Best Gelato.

We got lucky here because the line was short when we got in line but it soon grew quite long.

We walked around town for about an hour and took in all the wonderful views.

When we walked back down to meet the bus we went into the grocery store to cool down and we purchased the best deal of the day a large bottle of water for .17 it was such a good deal Roger & Mike had to go buy another one.  They were selling the small water bottles on the bus for 1 Euro each.  I know this is not a picture of water but I thought you would find it interesting to see how others purchase their meat.

Of course this display caught my attention.  It is a Nutella Calzone kit.  I really want this.

When the wonderful air-conditioned bus came we loaded up again and headed to Pisa.  Once we arrived we road a little train vehicle to where the Leaning Tower of Pisa is along with the church, baptistry and other buildings are.

We were the only people in our tour group that were going up in the tower, so after taking our cheesey (as our tour guide calls them) and not so cheesey pictures we got in line for our scheduled 6:20 climb up the stairs.

It was weird walking up the steps because you could really feel the tilt as you walked.

I was very proud of Roger & Pam they made it up to the very top even though they are both afraid of heights.  As you can see by the death grip on the wall.






 

I have to admit it was a lot scarier walking outside of this tower than the Eiffel Tower because you are walking on marble and you feel like you could slip very easily.

Our tour guide Barbara was waiting for us at the designated area as we were the last people to show up we boarded the little train again and did a quick little tour around the river where she pointed out some buildings of importance before getting back to our nice air-conditioned bus.  It was then time to head back to Florence.  We got back around 8:30 and jumped in the shower and just relaxed the rest of the evening.   This was a wonderful tour and would highly recommend it.