Day 27 - Tuscany

Today we woke up in Tuscany to rolling hills and fruit trees out the window with hardly any noise around!

We had talked to Gianni last night about places to see and do, I already had some thoughts but he added to them and made our plans concrete.
We first off drove to Bangui Di San Filipino, a sulphurous hot spring surrounded by thick pine forest and limestone hills. This isn’t as busy as some in the area, it did get busy as we were leaving though. We soaked for an hour, it rained a little and as the temperature was about 17degrees, hot springs was a very nice touch to start the day. I was very happy that afterwards our skin felt very soft instead of feeling like I had just bathed in sulphurous water!

After the hot pools, we drove over the a village called Radiofani, this has Fortezza Di Radicofani that is dated back somewhere to 973AD, this is a fortress that can be seen far and wide - we saw this ages away before coming in the area while driving. It sits at 810m above sea level.
We walked around the village, grabbed lunch from a local grocer that makes sandwiches and sat in a sunny court eating away.
This village had amazing views of the country side we admired from different points, every where you look you see another village in the distance.

After this we drove to Bagno Vignoni, it situated on a hill above the Val d'Orcia in Tuscany. It is a popular tourist destination and well known for its hot springs, the Romans used to bath in the square now where you can admire the water from restaurants or the path around the square. The swimming area is down below the town, but as the water has to travel and jump a waterfall, by the time it hits the pool it is cooler than up top. This would be nice on a hot day though. We had some coffee in town and walked around admiring the old buildings.

We then drove to a fortress 10minutes away we could see sitting on a hilltop, Rocca di Tentennano. Built as an extension of the rocky spur, and surrounded by several walls that made it unbeatable to any type of attack, the Rocca di Tentennano is the only fortress in the Val d'Orcia that has never been conquered by force. The Spanish tried a number of times but never succeeded.

We knew we had to sort dinner so we drove back to Montepulciano and parked the car. Went into a local grocery for supplies and browse the weird and wonderful things - milk cartons that contain wine! - we then booked into dinner at La Vineria di Montepulciano, number one on trip advisor for their cheese and meat boards for 7pm. We had an hour to kill so walked around the beautiful village of Montepulciano, taking in the views from the hill where we could and the amazing buildings.
We went back for dinner and if any one reading this has a trip to Tuscany, come to this restaurant, this was the best meat and cheese board and the house wine was fantastic. The servers were really nice as well - you may not like the music but we had a great time to the upbeat music playing!
For those playing at home, Montepulciano has played host to the Twilight movies of late… No I didn’t know this until tonight FYI!

We ventured back to our BnB where we watched the sunset in the horizon… romantic and cheesy yes I know! I am now sampling the wine bottle I mentioned with Katie proof reading everything I am writing as Katie doesn’t drink red wine… sorry to her, this is beautiful wine!Read more