We woke early this morning bright and early around 6AM. We had a long day ahead of us. The plan was an hour and a half bus ride through the hills of Tuscany to a medieval city called San Gimignano (pronounced San-Gee-meen-yano) for a short visit, and then off deeper into the hills of Tuscany for a light lunch and wine tasting at a medieval castle, then back to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower.
Describing San Gignminao is hard to put in words. Simply amazing. It’s this small village of about 2,000 people all enclosed in this medieval wall that helped protect the village from outsiders.
Throughout this little town were tons of little streets and little shops everywhere you turned. Everything from souvenirs to clothes, to shoes, to bakeries, to Italian deli’s to gellateria’s (Gellato), it was a great experience. We took advantage of all the shopping and even got to experience the home of the “world famous Gellato” which was the best gellato we’ve ever had.
We also climbed to the top of the local bell tower which was 263 steps to the top, but was well worth it. The views were amazing and some of the pics we got were incredible.
After San Gimingano we headed to this old medieval castle for a light lunch and lots of wine tasting. Riding through the hills of Tuscany seemed surreal. For so long we have been dreaming of doing this, and here we are, doing it. It was beautiful, surreal, and amazing all at the same time.
Once we arrived at the castle we had a small tour before we sat down for our light lunch and boy was it light. It consisted of 1 small crostini bread, 1 piece of prosciutto, and 3 small pieces of cheese. In the meantime, we were fed several different wines and with it being so humid and with so little food we got a bit tipsy pretty quick. It was all fun though.
They made the castle’s dungeon into a wine cellar!
After that incredible visit to the castle with the tasting of the wine and a purchase of the local Olive Oil, we had another hour drive to Pisa to the leaning tower. Now this was something we had seen for so long on tv, pictures and movies, but to see it for the first time in person was very cool. It was just as we had imagined. We made sure to scoop up some souvenirs while we were there for the memories and Janine’s scrapbooking. It was so cool to see the history behind this area and I have to hand it to our tour guide for giving us such insightful information.
How funny was this. We found a local street vendor selling Duff Beer!
This was the last stop, then back to the boat. We were exhausted. Didn’t do much, just went to dinner then back to the room to rest, we knew tomorrow would be another long day touring Rome.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Oh, Tuscany! It looks so cute, and that gelato looks YUM! Those are great pictures of the tower, such a pretty sky for a great background!