Italy | The place you love to love...

Sunset in Montepulciano

... and hate to hate. As my friend Stephanie put it "Italy is exactly what Italy wants to be in that moment and you just gotta roll with it."

I think we were a little spoiled coming from our wonderful experience in Monopolata. Chill, relaxing, just the right amount of character, not too much to do, not too little... Italy was... well... Italy. Overwhelming and mildly annoying. Beautiful, gorgeous and delicious food (we did not have a bad meal once!) but I think mostly we never felt like we were really able to get settled and relaxed or only for short spurts. Oh well... We managed to make it through just fine -- we just drank more wine! 

Views from Montepulciano

How does this work?

Market bounty!

We had booked an Agriturismo via AirBnB in Montepulciano for a little over a week, but after a few days there we just felt out of place so we decided to move to another little Agriturismo more in the country side just outside of Pienza (about 20 minutes away). This was an excellent choice (Note to Alyssa: This was literally just down the road from the place you recommended -- we would have stayed there but they could only fit us in for 2 days and we needed 4 days). 

Sunset from Pienza

Rolling hills of Tuscany

Room with a view. 

Country views, peace and quiet, wonderful hosts... OK and some slightly weird off color art but character right? Everything needs some character. The main things for us were (1) it was clean and (2) there were hosts onsite who spoke at least a little English and were SUPER kind and lovely helping us make reservations and make recommendations. These were our main issues with the first place we stayed. It had a little too much character (not the good kind), wasn't especially clean and there wasn't really any one to help us figure out the local area, make recommendations, etc. We finally relaxed, sat by the pool, drank more wine (do you see a theme?), and enjoyed the wonderful view.

Look, it's not a selfie!!

On the plus side -- There are many many good things about life in Italy (especially Tuscany):

• Drinking copious amounts of delicious wine. Every day. One meal we may have had a litre of house red wine... #sorrynotsorry
• Eating delicious home-made pasta at nearly every meal. 
• Salami, prosciutto, coppa, or my favorite finocchiona (basically salami with fennel seed) with bread, cheese, fruit... okay basically on its own or with anything. 
• Gelato -- of course! Although after our binge eating in Bologna, we didn't have it nearly as much in Tuscany. 
• Driving a Fiat Panda. I loved this car. Easy to shift, handles great around all the tight Italy roads... I may have enjoyed driving in Italy waaaaaaayyyy more than I thought.
• Grappa. Turns out Grappa is wonderful, if you get good Grappa. We picked up a bottle at one of the wineries we visited. Grappa di Brunello (made from Brunello so basically it's heaven). We sadly had to leave this in Switzerland -- something about not taking open liquids on the plane.... Damn security regulations. 
• Italian coffee. Everyday. 
• Italian craft beer! Who knew this was a thing? I think we went to maybe 5 different microbreweries? Not the most amazing stuff but we had some solid beers. The weird part was Italians don't know how to pour beer. Every beer we had they basically just dumped the beer from the tap into the glass.... 

Walk down the road to our first agriturismo in Montepulciano 

While in Tuscany, we obviously had to visit some wineries. We visited one on a rainy day in Montepulciano (only bought one bottle, enjoyed it in Pienza), another out towards Montelcino (Super Tuscans! Oh my!) and a third on a what ended up being a really lovely tour from Siena (Shout out to the Townsend family!). I had hoped to visit a few more but having to change accommodations mid-way through kind of messed up our schedule a bit so we didn't have time to visit any others. Tuscan wine is delicious! We may have shipped some home... 

Poppies! Near Santa Guilia winery outside of Montelcino.

Views from the fort in Montelcino

Gorgeous light over Montelcino

Wonderful end to our time in Tuscany!

I guess we're about three countries behind at this point on the blog (we're in Copenhagen, Denmark presently). Next up on the blog: Florence, Switzerland (that may be more than one post) and Denmark! Next up on travel: We're in Denmark for 10 days, then Amsterdam then ending our trip in Scotland. WAIT! ENDING OUR TRIP?! I don't even want to talk about it.