San Gimignano - Day 7
We woke up in the AM, sporting a tiny red wine headache, and couldn't fathom driving the 2+ hours to the wine tour I had booked us. I'll admit that it is tough for me to veer off the sched, but that's why I married my husband - he is constantly reminding me to go with the flow and I adore him for that. So after some hemming and hawing we emailed our cancellation.
We had been feeling a wee bit glutinous on this trip (gelato everyday - yes please!) so we thought it would be a good idea to walk (and by walk I mean hike) into town and climb to the top of the town tower - it was a great view and only 3 Euro (don't quote me on that, might have been 4-5).
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| View from the top of the tower |
After a bit of shopping we headed back home and got ready for dinner. This being our last night at the farmhouse we decided to splurge and have dinner there again, and tonight we were in for a treat, it was Steak ala Florentine night! We got ready and enjoyed a little pre-dinner glass of wine, whilst trying to take in all the beautiful scenery:
And just because, here are pics from dinner!
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| This was the starter and I would have been happy with just this - I could eat a plate of meats and cheeses like this for every dinner and be happy! |
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| Steaks on the open pit! |
This dinner was amazing, and growing up on Montana beef, I don't say that lightly! But overshadowing the meat was the red, in the picture above, and the hosts were not shy with it. I literally think we each had a bottle, it's really hard to know because our glass would be half empty (or full depending on who you talk to) and they would come around and fill it again. Sneaky? Yes. Complaining? No. With all the wine indulging we moseyed onto bed around 11.
San Gimignano to Lucca, with a little Florence in between - Day 8
One note I haven't mentioned about Agriturismo Niccoli is that breakfast is included every morning, which was great for us as we would fill up on breakfast, allowing us to save money and just have a small snack for lunch and then be hungry for a big dinner. Today, our last morning, we fueled up once again - the breakfast was really good and plentiful with meats, cheeses, yogurt, fresh fruit from the farm, fresh bakes pastries and cakes and hard boiled eggs - once again another plus for this place!
We headed out on the road to Lucca, but we were making a pit stop in Florence on our way. We were very aware that it is a major no-no to drive in the city center and that there are hefty fines for doing so, so we were a bit nervous about accidentally driving in. As we got closer and closer into town we kept seeing signs that had red circles with a slash through them, which I thought meant we had entered the danger zone, come to find out later on these were just no-parking signs, but I didn't know that and it caused for some stressful times and a couple conversations that went like this:
Me: "STOP!!!! You can't drive here, there is that sign!!!!! TURNAROUND!!!!
Cayce: "Why didn't you tell me earlier!??!!"
Me: "I didn't see it!"
Cayce: "You NEED to pay better ATTENTION!"
Me: "I'm trying really hard but I can't read the signs!"
You get the point - it was tense! We finally found some free parking and headed into the city center. We did a little shopping and then made a rookie mistake by letting our hunger get the best of us and being indecisive trying to find the perfect lunch spot that ended up with awful microwaved pasta. So awful in fact that after we were done we walked around the corner and saw a McDonalds and couldn't help ourselves. Yes we are horrible people for eating at McDonalds in Florence but my god, the fries and ICY diet coke hit the spot!
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| He looks happy! |
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| Sweaty and tired at the end of the day! |
I am ashamed to admit we didn't really do much in Florence other than walk around and eat at Micky D's. I did some shopping; bought a couple of great leather purses but every attraction had a huge line, and we were just really "sight seed" out at this point. We just really wanted to wander around the city so that's what we did!
After "seeing the sights" we jumped in our car and made it to Lucca. I am not really sure why I wanted to visit Lucca so much, but when I was planning our itinerary it seemed like a good spot that would be relatively close to Cinque Terre. That being said the only thing we really wanted to do was rent bikes to explore the town, as I heard that was the thing to do, but by the time we got there we were both so exhausted that we our night consisted of 2 much needed showers, 1 large salami pizza for takeaway, 2 Peronis and 3 episodes of Jersey Shore. ***Disclaimer*** I'm not REALLY a fan of the show BUT it was the only English channel and it was taking place in Florence, where I just been 4 hours prior, so that made it much more interesting.
Next up Cinque Terre!
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