We arrived in Florence ridiculously late. We’d been so distracted by San Miniato (and that sunset) and ended up spending a few hours winding through the Tuscan mountains in the dark until we got to our hotel for the night.
It was pretty cold up in the mountains and suddenly, the t-shirt and shorts combo I’d had all day, didn’t seem like quite a good idea. On the flipside, we ended up seeing a somewhat rare fox up in the mountains. Gabriele was taken by the fox but Lloyd and I explained how common they are in London (seriously, in parts of London, you’ll find loads of them on your walk back home at night).
FYI, this picture below is not what it was like in the mountains. This was taken driving through one of the villages. The mountains were pitch black.
This was not where we were staying for the night. We got distracted on the way by this fortress with the deer on top.
Finally, we arrived at our villa – Villa Poggio di Gaville. This place, by the way, is pretty special. The owner and his wife are also travellers and like us, they constantly head back home with lots of souvenirs so their house is filled with so many of their travel treasures. Moroccan lamps, Grecian urns, Portugese tiles, Indonesian mask carvings, Thai elephants… literally – the works!
I took a few more photos but quite frankly, as soon as we settled in, we headed straight to the restaurant for dinner and some much needed red wine!
Dinner was an amazing array of course after course of home cooked delicious meals. It was sheer perfection and it went down a treat!
I washed it all down with some Limoncello. (I’ve really grown to like the stuff!)
That’s our host below. He’s such an amazing man. So interesting and perhaps the singular reason why this place is so special.
He used to run a successful imports business and gave it all up to run this place. He told us about how he was terrified at first as he didn’t know if he would be successful but it was his dream to do this and he knew he had to. He cast aside the security that came from his business and threw the same skill and enthusiasm into building his dream career. Given the awards and accolades he’s received lately, its safe to say he’s doing quite well. Kudos to him.
We finished off the evening with more wine, lots of conversation before retiring to bed.
The next day, we woke bright and early (if you can call 10.30am early), to get in some breakfast and see more of our surrounding.
Villa Poggio di Gaville truly is fantastic – especially do with the sun shining. Let’s take a little walk across it, shall we?
That’s our faithful rickshaw (and Gabriele’s skateboard).
A little dip in the pool if you’re ever here is highly recommended by the way…
Eventually, it was time to head off in search of more discovery in our little trusty rickshaw…
Little did we know, we wouldn’t have to travel far to find it…
…but more on that in our next post!
*There’s a clue in the last two photos above. 🙂
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