Tales from Tuscany

Hi everyone, I'm home and despite the rain which has greeted our return, it is great to be back. As you can see from the title many of your guessed the answer to my Riddle me Ree post......it was indeed Tuscany. It just shows how recognisable the wonderful countryside is.

We stay in the tiny hamlet of Pancole, which is very near to the ancient medieval city of San Gimignano. The hotel has an excellent restaurant and one of the things we love is not having to drive anywhere in the evening for dinner. We simply walk down from our room and eat, such a luxury and it also means we are able to enjoy a drink with our dinner, bliss.

We had seven days of clear blue skies and 29-34oc temperatures. I understand that this was a good week to have gone away as here at home it has done nothing but pour with rain! On our first day we went into San Gimignano and climbed the tower to see the wonderful view from the top, out across the rolling hills of Tuscany.

To get to the top of the tower involves an awful lot of stair climbing but the views from the top are stunning and well worth the achey legs. This is the view looking back towards Pancole which is less than a 10 minute drive from the centre.

On the right is the tower we climbed. It is always best to do this at the beginning of the day before the heat gets too intense. It is the old clock tower and one of the tallest structures open to the public. In it's time San Gimignano had over 70 towers. It was a pecking order that the richest had the tallest ones. Over the centuries many have fallen down or been removed but there are still many standing in this walled city and they dominate the skyline for miles.

Above are a couple more views from the clock tower the second photo shows the view down into the centre of the city.

After visiting the clock tower we returned to the city centre and strolled around. This is the ancient well and is always a good spot for eating the award winning ice cream sold in the local gelataria.

I can never resist Italian ice cream and my choice for that day was a scoop of coconut and a scoop of blackberry with no less than lavender as a secret ingredient ...it was seriously tasty and had to been eaten pretty quickly in the heat.

We also walked down to the ancient fonts where the fresh water springs from, shown above, and took in the wonderful views surrounding this delightful city.

we even spotted two rather hot dogs waiting patiently for their owners!

As heat of the day rose higher we took the short walk back to our car and drove "home" to Pancole to sit on our balcony, enjoy a rest and wait for our evening meal.

I hope you have enjoyed the first of my tales from Tuscany. We also visited Florence and Sienna so I will be back with some photos to share, hopefully at the weekend. In the meantime I have my last jewellery class of the year this afternoon and the washing machine needs loading yet again.For the moment the rain is holding off so I hope to get it dry outside. Billy had a lovely time with my parents but he is so pleased to be back in his garden again.

I hope you are all well and I look forward to catching up with your posts really soon.

Bye for now,

Jane x