Bonjour'no, Roma!

We just returned from an adventure-filled week in Italy!  We're separating our stories into the different areas we visited for ease of reading and photos.  Here we go!

Our first day in Italy was spent in the beautiful city of Rome.  We began our day by eating a wonderful breakfast of crusty bread with cream cheese, yogurt, croissants, and Italian ham and cheese slices, all found at the terrace eatery on the roof of our hotel.  We then set out to walk around parts of historical Rome, specifically to see the Colloseum and consume as much Gelato as the hot and humid weather would allow.  Both of us enjoyed seeing so much history all in one place.  What amazing architecture! 

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The Bane of Brandon's Existence...

The dreaded Dodge...

(...also known as, "When my wonderful husband rose to the incredible challenge of taming the manual Dodge."  ---Arielle)

After our day exploring Rome it was back to the airport to pick up Mel and Cathy and our car that I would be driving for the rest of the week.  It was really nice to have a private driver to get us from the airport to Rome and back again.  Considering how crazy the driving looked in Rome,  I know I would never drive in Rome!

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Fattoria Poggio Alloro

Brandon and Arielle pose at the farm.

While I love our Garmin GPS device, when you don’t have a precise address for a destination, it makes things quite a bit more difficult than you ever imagined. Add to that the stress of the rental car and navigating crazy switchbacks and narrow alleyways through tiny villages. What should have taken us about 3 hours to drive from Rome to the Fattoria Poggio Alloro, took us about 5 hours. Five hours of frightful uphill stalls, stopping to ask directions from Italians in tiny villages that really don’t speak English, and Cathy quietly praying for us all from the back seat.

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San Gimignano

Brandon and Arielle atop the fort.

We visited the medieval town and fort of San Gimignano during our stay at the Aguritismo. The town is surrounded by high walls on all sides with two large gates at either end. It is mostly a tourist-driven town now, with many shops in which we girls enjoyed discovering wonderful little souvenirs. The town also boasts a Gelato World Champion gelateria! As if some of the world’s best gelato wasn’t a big enough achievement for this little town, I think our entire group would agree there is a little, unassuming pizzeria on the north side of the town square that has the best pizza we’ve ever had. It was both thin and chewy (not thin and crispy) and the flavors were absolutely delicious! The pizzeria is take out only and they give you a wonderful, ingenious cardboard holder for your slice so you can easily eat your pizza as you continue to walk through the town.

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Colle Val D'Elsa

The entrance to Colle Val D'Elsa

Another small village town we stopped at was Colle Val D’Elsa. This one was like the other little medieval villages that pop out of the top of hills in the Tuscan countryside, but unlike San Gimignano, it was geared for residents of the town, not tourists. Although people were friendly and seemed happy enough to have us wandering through their town with their teeny-tiny streets (we had to jump into doorways a number of times to avoid getting hit by vehicles), the shopping was negligible.

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