Carmignano

Today we are leaving our BnB in Chianti and saying goodbye to our lovely host Alba & her dog Luna. We have a bit of a drive to get up just outside of Florence as I wasn’t to try and see some towns along the way.

Our first stop was Monteriggioni. Monteriggioni is a walled town known for its medieval fortifications and watchtowers. The castle walls offer views of the surrounding Chianti region. The old town is accessed via the Porta Franca gate. This was another important site during the battles of Florence & Sienna.
We had a walk around, opting to not pay for the wall walk & see the armoury. It was a cute walled town heavy on the touristy side of things which I was hoping wasn’t going to be the case.

We ventured on, my big goal for the day was to see San Gimignano.
The village served as an important relay point for pilgrims travelling to or from Rome on the Via Francigena. The patrician families who controlled the town built around 72 tower-houses (some as high as 50 m) as symbols of their wealth and power. Although only 14 have survived, San Gimignano has retained its feudal atmosphere and appearance.
When we got there we found a festival was on and every car park was full. We even ventured to the park and ride areas with no luck, so I decided to fill the car up with fuel (well a guy pumped it for me!) and head onwards as we saw the village from many vantage points driving around it.

We stopped off at Certaldo for lunch, we grabbed a car park, took some time to work out the stupid Italian ticket machines and we were off to see the village.
I saw a group of people come out of an area (Side note - if you see a group of asians and you don’t know what to do in a town, follow them! They have their itinerary sorted to the letter and will lead you to your next activity) We walked into the area and found a Funicolare! (Cable Cart)
We took this up to the village and had the best bruschetta we have had so far in Italy! We walked around admiring the village and as it was during lunch, majority of things were closed so we headed back down on the Funicolare to continue our drive.

We are staying in a Village called Villa out of Signa so we can travel to Florence tomorrow, this idea quickly turned maybe we should of rethought this. The road was very narrow and some major blind bends.
We got to the hotel and checked in - this hotel had a pool and I was greeted by the owner in his speedos - this set the mood for the hotel. I’ll say this, if this is the worst hotel, we did pretty well!

We decided we had a bit of day and went into Signa to get some fly spray as mozzies were bad, a pizza for dinner and some other supplies. We took it to a picnic area near the hotel which no mozzies were!Read more