After a ninety minute ride, we arrived in Florence. The Hertz rental car office was supposedly 500 meters from the train station, but we had a little trouble finding it. We dragged our heavy luggage down steps, over cobblestone streets, and through narrow alleys for what seemed like an hour. We finally found it and got the keys to a cute little VW Golf.
Driving in Florence was pretty easy, albeit a bit faster paced than I would have preferred right out of the gate. Within a few minute though, we were out of the city, heading to our villa in San Polo in Chianti - about 10 miles out of town.
It was impressive that the GPS box got us to our villa, which well off the pavement, up a windy gravel road on top of a hill in the Tuscan countryside. However, the place wasn't exactly marked and we drove in circles for about an hour - passing the villa at least 4 times before we finally saw a person there and stopped to ask if this was Villa Fabbroni. It was indeed!
We were first greeted by Raoul, the farm dog, then by Stephano, the gracious host. He gave a tour of our place, which was charming, rustic, had all the comforts of home. It also had a beautiful deck that looked over the hills full with vineyards and olive groves and onto another villa below. Stephano informed us about the restaurant hours, daily fresh bread, and Tuesday-only pizza service. Lucky for us it was Tuesday, so we ordered a 3 section pie - one plain, one veggie, one meat. He also let us know that we could purchase estate olive oil and wine for very reasonable prices. We took him up on the offer to buy wine and he filled us up a 5 liter jug for only E15! We were even more pleased when we tasted it. Delizioso!
That evening we sat on the deck, drank wine, ate pizza, and relaxed.
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