Montepulciano.

Hi friends and family,

Mom and I made it safely home to the states after, again, many long hours of travel.  I thought I would do one last post to sum up the last stop of our journey... Montepulciano in the rolling hills of Tuscany.

Our arrival to Montepulciano was quite interesting.  We took a bus from Florence, which of course dropped us off at the bus station in Montepulciano.  We then took a smaller bus to the main plaza in town.  From there, we were sure we could grab a bite to eat before having someone call us one of the two taxis in town to take us to our farm house just a few miles outside of town. We hadn't eaten since breakfast, and it was around 5:00 at that point, so we were hungry gals, to say the least!  However, this little town apparently takes siesta time VERY seriously, and no restaurants were open.  On top of that, none of the shops in that area would call us a taxi, and we were sure if we tried calling ourselves it would be a hot mess of language barriers.  SO, a very nice lady that happened to speak both English and Italian overheard our frazzledness, and offered to help us.  At the same time, one of the two town taxis pulled up into the plaza (ptl!) and she helped us negotiate a ride to the farm house.  We never got a bite to eat though, and our farm house only served breakfast.  Awesome!  When we arrived at the farm house, Cinzia (the farm B&B owner) just so happened to be taking a trip into town to the grocery store, so she graciously allowed us to go along with her (we paid her a pretty penny), and we bought groceries for the evening and the next day.  Our plan to spend the day in the town of Montepulciano crumbled when we realized how difficult it was to get back and forth.

So instead, we relaxed all day... we read, we laid by the pool, we swam a little, and this was our view.

That town on the top of the hill is Montepulciano.

After our grocery shopping trip, Cinzia took us to her brother-in-law's pecorino cheese farm, where they make fresh and delicious pecorino cheese.

Pretty flowers at the pecorino cheese farm.

Our little room with the most uncomfortable bed known to man.  I'm surprised I didn't end up with bruised bones from the springs.  I ended up putting towels down underneath me to try and soften the blow.  However, our view was so worth it!!

View from our window.

 Our breakfast served in the morning.

Scary kitty.  I literally spent 5 minutes trying to shoo this cat away and he ended up chasing me back into our room where I stood for 5 minutes trying to figure out how to get around him once I got outside.  He was either going to bite me or scratch me, I was sure of it.

My view all day while relaxing by the pool.

And mom spent the afternoon saving bugs from drowning.

Shady spot to cool off.

The front of the farm house.

I loved Tuscany... the rolling hills were breathtaking.  I could have stared out into them all day.  Oh, well, I guess I did!  It was the perfect end to our busy, on-the-go trip.  We both needed that relaxing day.