I am almost a week behind in updating the blog, sorry. I will try to catch up today. I’m on a train to Rome right now, so hopefully it will give me some time to write. I’ll backdate the entries.

I just haven’ had time to write up everything about our days Tuscany, so I am putting this post in here as a placeholder to remind myself to do it.

But just know it was absolutely wonderful, so beautiful.

We are staying at a medieval castle just outside of Siena. This place is so cool. It is situated on a hill, so it can be seen from far away, and really stands out because of the design. It is shaped as a square, and each corner has a tall tower with crenelations on top. It is surrounded by tall cypress trees, olive groves, and flower gardens.

The castle is owned and occupied by two sisters who have had the castle in their family since the 1800s. Niccola, son of Laura, speaks English and helps run the operation. They rent two rooms as a bed and breakfast, and also a separate apartment on the lower floor off the courtyard. One of the two rooms is inside one of the castle towers. It requires about 100 steps to get to the bedroom, including two narrow spiral staircases – quite a workout! You definitely need to be healthy, have good knees, and pack light to stay here. But it is soooo worth it, as you have the entire tower to yourself. This includes big windows on all four sides with long distance views. You can see Siena on the hilltop on one side, and awesome views of the rolling hills lined with vineyards, olive groves, wheat fields, and spotted with cypress trees and big stone farmhouses. Molto benne!

However, there are also some not-so-good things. The bed is extra firm, as in extra hard. The pillows are flat. It’s somewhat clean, but not really clean, as they don’t seem to have a dedicated cleaning crew. And there are workers trimming the olive trees with chainsaws staring at 8am everyday. Since there is no A/C, we sleep with the windows open so everything outside can be clearly heard. This didn’t wake us up, as we awoke around sunrise each morning anyway.

Love this place, would definitely stay here again.

We were so reluctant to leave our wonderful Florence apartment that we didn’t even pack until the last minute. We left right at 11:00, the stated check-out time. At check-out we met Robert, who is half owner of the building, and let him know how much we loved the place. In return for the compliment he let us keep our network cable for free – haha!  Robert also called a taxi for us to go pick up our rental car.

As the taxi whisked us away, we had a last look at the Palazzo Vecchio and hoped it wouldn’t be another ten years before we go back.

Our rental car is from Avis. Again, we didn’t get the car we expected, although this time it turned out better.  We had expected a Fiat Grande Punto, but instead got an Alfa Romeo 147 – a sporty little hatchback.  It is a turbo diesel, so although the gas mileage probably isn’t so good, Kevin is having fun driving it.  And it is more comfortable than the Mercedes was, go figure.

I almost forgot to mention the (elevator) lift incident. On the night we arrived in Florence, we went out to walk around and have dinner. When we returned to the Relais Piazza Signoria, we called the lift to take us up to the 4th floor. When we got in and punched the floor number, it was slow to get going. It started up, then just stopped and the lights all went off. We were stuck, and it was pitch black. I happened to be holding my camera, so I turned it on to let the lcd give us some light. We could hear people moving around in the building and figured the electricity was off for everyone. Kevin pried open the lift door and we were between floors, no way at all to get out. We sounded the alarm bell a few times just to make sure someone knew we were in there. It seemed like a long time, but it was probably just five minutes until the lights came on and the elevator started moving – back down. At the bottom floor the doors opened and there was Rosa the manager. She convinced us to stay in the elevator for the ride back up – it was safe now, she said – and old us that the circuit breaker for the whole building had tripped. She had run down to the basement from her sixth floor office to reset the breaker. She thought it was because they were fully booked for the first time, and it was a warm day meaning that people were turning on air conditioning all at the same time causing the circuit to overload. Anyway, she was very apologetic, and it was kind of funny.

By the way, Kevin refused to ride the lift for the rest of our stay. He took the stairs, I took the lift.