I hesitated about giving Cennina it’s own blog post but decided how could I leave out a place we called home for six wonderful days. Our cute as can be Tuscan cottage (another great airbnb.com find https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/2287242) is a place I’ll forever remember and I knew as soon as I saw the door knocker that I had chosen the best place for us. Rather than feeling like visitors, we felt like part of the hilltop […]
A cross in the sky and a Sword in the Stone…..The Abbey of Saint Galgano was a Cistercian Monastery built to honor 12th-century Tuscan nobleman Galgano Guidotti, who renounced his life of riches and retreated to this area to dedicate himself to a hermetic life of prayer. Legend holds that he smashed his sword against the rock as a symbol of breaking from old ways, but instead it plunged into the stone and held fast. Set […]
I think of all the Tuscan villages we visited, lovely Lucca was my favorite. What struck me most was that it just seemed more livable and not as touristy as the others. The kind of place that would come to mind when picturing a perfect sunny Italian afternoon of sipping an Aperol Spritz (the most widespread and commonly drunk aperitif of Italians and the color of a Tuscan sunset) while nibbling on anything made with […]
San Gimignano is another of Tuscany’s walled medieval hilltop villages and is most noted for its series of striking towers and unforgettable skyline. Of the town’s original 72 towers, only 14 still remain. Visitors enter the town through the main gate, Porta San Giovanni. The traffic-free cobbled high street leads to Piazza della Cisterna, named for the cistern that supplied the old well in the middle of the square. It has been the center of town for […]
