Tuscany, Day 6: Florence

Tuscany, Day 6: Florence

View of the city of Florence from the Boboli Gardens Our last day in Tuscany, and our biggest city of the trip. Florence is way too big to cover on a one-day trip, or even in a week, but we chose a few things to see – and even those few turned out to be too many...
Tuscany, Day 5: Lucca

Tuscany, Day 5: Lucca

This is part of the wall that surrounds the city of Lucca. It’s important, when you’re planning a trip like SwItaly 2, to visit places that offer unique opportunities. You don’t want to do the same thing every day! One of the big attractions of Lucca was the...
Tuscany, Day 4: Siena

Tuscany, Day 4: Siena

San Domenico church in the foreground, Siena Duomo and its bell tower in the background. Today (May 1) was a national holiday in Italy, so we visited Siena along with several zillion other people. Really, it wasn’t so bad, except in the market. They have a...
Tuscany, Day 3: San Gimignano

Tuscany, Day 3: San Gimignano

San Gimignano, as seen from Certaldo Alto. Anya walks with Gary and Jan up the street in San Gimignano. Still hurting from being shut out of the shops in Assisi, the ladies in our group informed me that they needed a shopping experience. Of course that wasn’t possible...
Tuscany, Day 3: Cooking in Certaldo

Tuscany, Day 3: Cooking in Certaldo

The sign at the cooking school: it means “the kitchen of Giuseppina.” Today is our day for the cooking school, with Giuseppina. Her son and daughter-in-law were our chefs for that wonderful meal we enjoyed on the night we arrived in Tuscany, and it was...
Tuscany, Day 2: Spello

Tuscany, Day 2: Spello

Our group walks through Spello’s main town square. After lunch at the winery we traveled over to Spello, a nearby hill town that is not especially a tourist draw – unless you are traveling with Tuscany Tours. It’s one of their favorites, and we soon learned why....