Pontassieve

We didn't sleep very well this week. It could be because we took a nap upon arriving breaking the number one cardinal rule of avoiding jet lag. It could be because Italian beds have nothing on American beds (even our crappy one). It could be because we were consuming copious amounts of wine. My Dad referred to this as "wine-lag". :-) Whatever the case, we spent most nights awake from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. Since we didn't really have an agenda this didn't prove to be too much of an inconvience. Well, I take that back. By the time we woke up and were ready to go out and about it was always 1:00 p.m. which meant everything was closed until at least 3:00. Oh well!

On our first full day we went and had cappucinos - delicious - and just started walking. It was a beautiful day, probably in the high 60's low 70's. I saw a sign for a cemetery and I thought that might be neat. We ended up on one of their "wine roads" walking through vineyards and lots and lots of olive groves. Neither one of us had seen a producing olive tree up close and Jay tried one - he did not recommend it! I wish I could have gotten a picture of his face. Pretty sure these olives are not any good until they are pressed for oil.

Mmmmmmm. :-)

For the record: I knew EXACTLY where we were...HA!

Vineyards, with an olive grove in the top right.

Pontassieve ended up being perfect for us. It was a 5 minute walk to the train station from our B&B and then a 20 minute train ride to Florence. Florence has a large train station that is a main hub so from there you can get pretty much anywhere you need to go. We spent one day in Florence and one day in Siena. The rest of the time we just enjoyed being in a small town in Tuscany. We walked a lot, ate a lot of bread, cheese, salami and wine and just relaxed. The weather was great - a little chilly, but sunny every day.

The grocery shopping was always interesting. They actually had a big supermarket, which is very uncommon for Italy. They had baskets that you could carry or roll! (Please see the picture of Jay below.) We thought they were pretty funny. We also got in trouble one day for picking out fruit without putting a plastic glove on. This cute old man who didn't speak any English came up to us with a glove and put it on my hand. Oops! At the check out stand we typically just held out a handful of change and let them take what they needed. :-)

Check out the room colors! Maybe that is why we couldn't sleep!