My Tuscan Adventure

Sounds perfect right? Not so fast. 

This past weekend I had my first taste of attempting to venture into the unknown Tuscan countryside with nothing but a map in hand (one of Florence, not of Tuscany...unhelpful) and a reservation at an Agurturismo with a woman who barely spoke English. First of all, you are probably wondering what an Agurturismo is. It is a bed&breakfast-type hotel, located in the country, mostly in huge, ancient farmhouses. Sounds quaint and romantic right? I thought so. My traveling companion had flown in from Paris for the weekend and I thought it would be a lovely idea to take him to this Agurturismo. After trying to fit in all the sightseeing and food-indulging of Florence in one day, we hopped on a train to the Siena train station, where I had understood that we could walk to our hotel. Determined to figure it out ourselves and not ask for directions or a cab, we wandered the streets of Siena utterly lost. Finally, we threw in the towel, sucked up our pride, and trekked back to the train station to ask a cab driver to speak to the concierge at the Agurturismo in Italian to figure out where we were going and take us there. After a long, confused but amused conversation, our cab driver handed me back my phone, took his price book out from his car and pointed to a listing that said "30 km - 55€". Shoot.

 to put the distance between Siena and Rapolono in perspective...

Well we certainly weren't walking. We piled dejectedly into the cab and headed off to Rapolono, where the Agurturismo actually was which is a province of Siena. Key word, Province. I guess there are a lot of those in Siena and other Tuscan towns, so watch out enthused travelers, you may not be headed where you think you are. 55 euros later we reached the other Augurtismo owned by the same people and followed the owner in her tiny seafoam blue car through winding dirt roads to our final destination. 

Finally. The hotel was nice and the two women who worked there were darlings. Thank god I was traveling with someone who stepped in after watching the owner and myself converse practically in sign language and asked if anyone spoke French. The rest of the weekend's events were communicated between him and one of the owners in fluent French which he later would ask me if he had understood correctly, kindly allowing me to feel like I was any sort of helpful. Of course I was useless. Though the hotel was nice and welcoming and the restaurants we went to were tasty, the surrounding area was anything but quaint. If I had been alone there I actually would have felt unsafe. It was the first time in my entire stay in Italy that I felt completely out of my element and really uncomfortable in my surroundings. I definitely would rather have stayed in a crappy, falling apart hotel in the most beautiful area. But regardless, any adventure had is a learning experience. I learned that I better start learning Italian more quickly and also learned the importance of a map. 

After being back in Florence for a week and fully recovered from the slight culture shock, I felt it was time to try my hand at a Tuscan adventure again. Yesterday, in the rain, a friend and I took the train...which was an adventure all in itself... to Lucca. A story to be continued at a later time...