Hill Towns

I honestly, at this point, don't know how many hill towns we saw in Tuscany. Seemed like there was a new one almost every day. They were charming and full of pottery, tiny streets, wine tastings, and great locals. We really loved Sienna, and were there just a week before the annual horse race that they have around the town's main piazza. So the dirt was laid down and well packed and the bleachers were set up in front of all the stores all the way around the entire piazza. The horses will run just where those people and tables are.


One of the main buildings in the Piazza


Love this shot of this waitress waiting for customers at magic hour in the Piazza. The light is amazing.


San Gemignano - Super cool pottery and somehow we managed to be there during some sort of block party...for lack of a better word. They shut down part of the main street and set up tables for dinner. We also went to a specialty cheese shop and found a chocolatier. Both were AMAZING.


We did a lot of wine tasting in Montalcino and Montepulciano. And Montalcino is SO high on the hill, I truly felt like we were about to drive into a cloud.




On our drive from Montepulciano to Cortona, it rained for the first time since our first day in Lake Como. We snapped a ton of pictures out the car window as we were driving, and proved Geoff's point about being able to throw your camera down the street in Italy and be able to take a great picture.



Fun shots of the crazy clouds during the rainstorm.



Cortona (made famous by "Under the Tuscan Sun") was gorgeous and though we'd been led to believe it was overrated by the guidebooks, we really enjoyed it. It rained slightly while we were there but we were undeterred and found a little restaurant where we could eat outside (even though they looked at us like we were crazy) And this is where we had one of our best meals of our whole trip.


That is a chilled tomato soup in that huge wine glass in front of me. It was amazing. Our waiter said I couldn't leave Tuscany without trying it. Though he did say that the chef doesn't make it quite as good as his grandmother.