Day 6: beautiful Tuscana

On day 6 I got to check off one of the items on my "bucket list" : Drive around Tuscany!!! I have been dreaming about the day when I could leisuring drive around the Tuscan hillside. And my dreams came true. And no, it was not a let-down. The only let-down of the day was the awful weather the sun setting way too early for my personal preference. But I can't control either of those so oh well...just means I will HAVE to return again on a good weather day and hopefully stay in a villa and visit a winery. YES!

So Alison and I rented a car and had a blast with no real plans or goal, just the whole day and a full tank of gas, oh, and our trusty rented GPS "tom-tom". Tom saved our lives this day.

Oh, and I don't have many pictures to show from this day, as I was driving I was not the picture taker... (and Alison and I also took lots of pictures of the other which is why a large portion of my pictures have her in them..)

Our car for the day! :-D

I kept pulling over to the side of the road
(don't worry, there were places for you to do so) so
we could take pictures and look around

At some point we passed a huge castle on the side of the highway, so thanks to our trusty
GPS "tom" we busted a U-y and went to investigate. We ended up learning
that it was a famous castle in all of the tour books, we just didn't have a tour book.

the view from the top of the castle walls

    

Siena, Italy
(by this point the weather was rather dreadful which didn't
make us want to explore a whole lot)

the main piazza (sorry, i am lazy to look up names) in Siena

Siena's Duomo

After Siena we decided to head back to Florence by way of Arezzo. If you have never heard of Arezzo, Italy, its ok, because I doubt many people have... And honestly, I can't tell you much about it because by the time we drove through it it was POURING rain, FOGGGGGY to the point where you couldn't see a foot infront of the car and DARK like there was never a sun (or moon). Add to that driving a manual (compare that to speaking a new language, yea!!) on a mountain side that is curving randomly at 90 degree angles every 10 seconds and that gives you an accurate depiction of that evening for Alison and I. I think I have to say that I am thankful that I don't freak out under pressure or stress and so we survived and I am also thankful for our GPS "tom" who, while he may have led us to a few random dead-ends, eventually got us back to the drop off spot for the car rental. This was definitely a day to go in the memory bank as CRAZY and awesome. The morning started out wonderful with awesomely, incredible views and ended with our lives flashing before our eyes constantly. Anyways, just want to say, the rest of the trip was rather uneventful in this kind of way so its ok if thats the only crazy thing that happened while we were in Italy for 8 days, right? And also, I feel though that I can conquer the world if I can conquer the hills of Tuscany in the dark and fog and horrible rain in a manual. Thats all! haha.

Anyways, that concludes Day 6 of driving around Tuscany!

Ciao!