Exploring Tuscany

Today we continued our exploration of Tuscany, visiting San Gimignano and Volterra.

We started our day with an early morning wake up from pounding in the unit above ours. In fact we’d heard the pounding all through the night, and hadn’t gotten much sleep 😅 unfortunately there was a large family living above us, and the floors of the building were quite thin. We’d planned to stay in this spot for 6 days, but given we’d not gotten much rest we contacted the Airbnb host and asked to find new accommodations. The host was quite apologetic, and indicated they’d gotten similar complaints recently and apologized. We grabbed coffee from a cafe downstairs and then packed up and headed to a new Airbnb nearby in Terricciola. The new Airbnb wasn’t as well located, but was MUCH quieter thankfully, and we could still see Peccioli from this town, as Peccioli sits atop a hillside.

After getting settled we hit the road, headi by to San Gimignano first. This was an old medical town surrounded by a city wall, and it was fun to explore the winding streets. There were a ton of tourists here, as apparently it’s a common tour stop. We grabbed lunch here, opting for paninis that were absolutely stellar! Funnily, we misread the menus and while we were trying to order vegetarian sandwich’s we ended up with a ton of meat! Before we left Chelsea grabbed tiramisu from a local vendor, but wasn’t super impressed so we decided we need to try it again somewhere else.

Next we got back on the road and headed to Volterra. This town was less populated by tourists, and felt like a more authentic medieval city. We really enjoyed exploring here, and there was a beautiful view of the surrounding farmland from the top of the city that we really enjoyed. Chris opted to try ricotta gelato here and loved it! The gelato was ricotta based, with fig and walnut added.

After exploring Volterra we headed to a local grocery store and shopped for groceries to do our first cooking of the trip! When we got home Chelsea whipped up pesto gnocchi and cooked vegetables, and the meal was better than most of the sit down restaurant meals we’ve had in Italy to date! After dinner we called it a night, with more exploring of Tuscany tomorrow.Baca selengkapnya