Exploring Certaldo

A bit of a lazy morning before heading out to explore our hilltop locale of Certaldo Alto. It is quite tiny, with lots of windy alley ways, all beautifully old and with nooks and crannies. The kids played in the small playground in the village (lined with olive trees, all bearing olives) where what looks like daffodils (?) are growing wild on the side of the hill tops.

In search of lunch, we decided to take the funicular down to the village after working out that Google Maps statement of there being a bakery in our village were false. Got there just as the shops were closing up for a few hours and the entire village of Certaldo proper turned into a ghost town for a few hours (most inconvenient this idea of closing down from 1.00-3.00pm every day!). We decided to not wait for the funicular and walked back up a very steep hill.

The kids and I played board games up on the tower for a few hours, ready for gelati time! No gelati in Certaldo Alti either as it turns out, so we walked back down the very steep hill, to find the ghost town was a hive of activity. We had also been charged with finding our nightly wine offerings. Tough stuff really. Every other places we have stayed at has had these small shops which sell wine. NONE in Certaldo, we think because a very large co-op has opened up on the outskirts of town which has a pretty incredible range of food and alcohol, to the point where no-one else seemed to have bothered have their corner store any more.

What we did find was a tiny wine shop which had a shelf without about 8-10 varieties of local wine and four gigantic vats of wine on tap. Each was simply labelled as either bianca or rossa for between €1.40 and €2.40 per litre. We didn't have any bottles with us, so we the guy sold us 2 litres of merlot in an old water bottle! We did buy a couple of real bottles too, so it wasn't totally uncouth.Read more