(all pictures are low res, for high res click here)
The next stop for our honeymoon thru Italy took us to
Tuscany
just south of Siena.
After yet another 4 hour driving adventure, we finally reached our destination
at the Villa dei Lecci, an Italian
villa dating back to 800 A.D.
. The villa is stuck in the
middle of vineyards
, and featured some really
cool artwork.
.
Since it was hot outside, we were fortunate to have the
yellow
suite on the first floor.
.
The walls were covered by letters from inhabitants of the house from the early
1600's
. The backyard included a
couple of gardens
where we had an amazing dinner one night that gave us a tremendous sunset
.
I also made a new friend with their dog Poldo.
(video of me playing with Poldo).
Our first day of
wine touring
took us north of Siena to the Chianti
region, where we had the pleasure of trying a bunch of
Chianti Classico's. Our first stop
took us to a small winery called
Malpensata,
just outside of Radda in Chianti.
We spoke to a very nice italian woman who had us try 4 different types of wine,
our favorite being a simple Chianti Rosso. She also let us walk around the
grounds where we took some amazing photos including the one at the top of this
page.
,
After the wine we headed into Radda, viewed a coat-of-arms wall
,
and then grabbed some lunch.
. After lunch we had
reservations at the huge winery of
San Felice , so we headed down tiny roads south
til we got there.
During the tour, we went into the cellar
to check out these HUGE wine barrels made out of Slovenian oak.
We ended our wine touring early to head into
Siena
to see the sights, including
the art
,
Piazza Il Campo
(video of the Piazza), the
Duomo
and of course shopping.
The next day we headed south to the villages
of Montalcino (check out this
awesome panoramic shot of the entire village
) and
Montepluciano. Montalcino
is known for it's
Brunello's
and we stopped at a small winery called La
Mannella where a 10 year
old served us some scrumptous wine. Yummy... then we headed to the village
for some lunch
.
After lunch we drove
to Montepluciano
where we found Canneto winery. Again, the
owners were incredibly friendly and we had a lot of fun tasting wine with them.
For our last night in Tuscany, we went back
to Siena so that we could get some more grubbin' food and this time we didn't
mess around - we got honest to goodness Pizza!
As luck would have it, the local symphony was serenading us for dinner.
.
The next day, we packed our things and headed to Portofino.