Sunday was our first full day at the Farm and the family plans an orientation from 9:30am – 11:00am to give you an overview of the area and also walk through all of the activities available for you to explore during your week visit.
When you arrive, there is an itinerary called ‘A week with Isabella Daily Options’ – along with a thick 3-ring binder with detailed explanations for everything for you to explore in the surrounding area. From hikes, to restaurants, to towns. You really don’t need to plan a THING before you get here because they go to great lengths to offer you amazing options.
During the orientation you are encouraged to really saturate yourself in the surrounding area verses trying to make yourself tired with all kinds of long day trips where you leave the area. We are staying in the ‘Val D’Orcia’ which is really what you think of when you think of Tuscany. All of the picturesque rolling hills, eucalyptus trees, and hill towns are as far as the eye can see. It is truly breathtaking.
We really enjoyed Isabella’s orientation and tips on how to be a good guest in Italy and really appreciate the culture and what Italians in this area have preserved for over 1,000 years. For example, if you buy property in the area – it is very controlled, everything is decided for you – what materials you can use to renovate, what colors, etc. They have strict laws on no pools or fences – which preserves the landscape. You have freedoms in Italy as long as it doesn’t infringe on others freedoms. If what you want to do with the property changes the ‘view’ of another, then you are not allowed to make that change.
After we signed up for just about everything we headed back to our little house. I was so tired, I needed to lay down. I had a BRILLIANT idea to have espresso after dinner the night before because I thought the cups looked so cute and all of the Italians seemed to be doing it. Well, I payed the price with about a 2 hour night of sleep. Yikes.
Dana decided to take the car to the local co-op to get groceries for our lunch and allow me to rest for a bit. She returned with fresh made pasta and sauce, and a few other things we needed for the mornings. While she prepared the pasta, I went to the garden and picked the fresh veggies for our salad. We have the tiniest little cupboard that is or ‘kitchen’ – it has as sink and a stove and all of the supplies we need and somehow – it works!
Our lunch we absolutely delicious and we enjoyed it with some complimentary wine the family produces that they included as part of our welcome. As it was Sunday, after our late lunch – we finished around 3pm, it was time for another nap. I will MISS these Sundays when I get home. LOL.
I did try to sleep – but still couldn’t relax, so I got up and wrote another blog. That usually helps me – to get all of the thoughts out of my head out and recorded.
We had them makes us dinner reservations at a place that had the same name as one of my favorite places in Florence. Soon it was time to get ready and go and we were on our way. We had 8pm dinner reservations and gave ourselves about 45 minutes ahead of our reservation to walk around the the little hill town of Montefollonico.
We arrived at the perfect time of day when the sun is setting and hitting the buildings with the softest light. You feel like you could point your camera anywhere and take a great photo. You don’t have to be a good photographer in Italy, really. Most everything you are looking at feels like beauty at its finest, so you just point and shoot and voila, you have an amazing photo.
We arrived at the restaurant at 8pm, sat down and looked at each other and realized we weren’t hungry! We started laughing thinking why are we here, we were still full from lunch. And yet still, we stayed and ordered dinner and a glass of wine each.
We are constantly amazed at just how good the wine is here and how cheap an amazing glass is – about 5 Euro. We ordered salads and Dana had a bowl of Tuscan soup (which she couldn’t stop raving about, she said it had layer upon layer of flavors). I had their house speciality which is a pasta that they finish at the table in front of you in a gigantic pecorino cheese wheel that they have made into a big bowl – so that they can really coat your pasta in cheese.
When they brought it to me I said, ‘Wow, I basically just ordered a fancy mac and cheese.’ But it looked delicious so I ate it and we somehow finished our dinners. Still, we were so full and decided we needed to do SOME form of exercise when we got back – like wind sprints in the front yard. Not really, but we needed to do something!
We ended up taking our flashlights and went on about a 30 minute walk out on the property under the pitch black sky. You could see so many stars it was amazing. We only decided to turn back when we heard a ‘rustling’ in the bushes. That was enough to get our cardio up all the way home and we were done for the night. We had signed up for a 6:30am 7 kilometer hike with Carlo the next morning, it was time to get to bed.