The Lowes Go To Italy...Again (Day 1)

Welcome to our online travel scrapbook! I love to travel, and I love to write about it after we're home so that I can relive it again and again. I love the way travel opens my perspectives on the world and the people who live in it. I love seeing history come to life. I have made a hobby of planning potential trips down to the last detail, most of which I'll never actually take, but even planning them is exciting. I also write to help those who may be planning similar trips and want a realistic account. I am not a 20-something influencer in a romantic, billowy dress trying to sell the products sponsoring me; I'm just a real-life woman in her 50s who loves to travel! 

My sweet mother passed away in October. I'm an only child, and it was hard. My dad is in excellent health at 87 and doesn't require the level of help she did, so the possibility of travel opened up again. I decided that, on her birthday, I could be home and sad, or somewhere fabulous, so I started researching possibilities. Her birthday fell on the first Saturday of my spring break, but I wasn't sure Kevin would be able to take off, and so my first plans were for a solo trip. I finally settled on Florence. We visited Rome (and Pompeii and Venice) in 2019, and my confidence about navigating Italy was pretty high. I planned to tour Florence and either take the train or some day tours to go to other places outside the city. I don't think Kevin thought I was serious about going alone until I started giving him flight numbers. Suddenly, he discovered he could take off work! 

Once Kevin was onboard, renting a car and driving around Tuscany became a possibility, too. Especially when doing it the first time, that's a venture that's best done with two heads instead of one. On mama's birthday, April 6, we landed at Florence's Amerigo Vespucci airport after a layover in Amsterdam! (We definitely prefer Amsterdam to Paris when the best flight times allow it.)

We picked up a Volkswagon T-cross, set Google maps to navigate us to our first stop, took a deep breath, and drove away! Turn-by-turn GPS navigation is a fantastic invention. It would have been extremely difficult to navigate our way out of the city without it. 

Tips on renting a car in Italy: the default choice is manual transmission. If you want automatic, be sure to double-check that you reserved one, and expect to pay a little more. We reserved with Budget through AutoEurope because they have a good reputation for helping customers with any problems. We both got International Driving Permits at AAA before our trip. This is very easy, and while the rental car place never asked for it, if we'd had any sort of accident, the police would have. It's illegal to drive without it. For more on driving in Italy, this article is good. 

Our first stop was just south of Florence at the Florence American Cemetery to pay respects to the 5800 American soldiers of WW2 that are either buried or memorialized there. I have more pictures, but this video shows everything better.

Once out in the countryside in the Chianti region, we followed the most twisty roads I've ever seen through the most gorgeous rolling hills I've ever seen. We found ourselves wanting to look at the scenery, but also needing to keep our eyes on the road! The motorcycles and scooters will zoom around you, even on curves, so beware! Soon, we arrived at Castello di Fonterutoli which is the estate of the Mazzei family since 1435, just south of the village of Castellina in Chianti. Fonterutoli is actually a little village with a population of 80, but is mostly devoted to the resort of the Mazzei winery. I'll write more about the winery later. For now, I'll describe our accommodations.

Castello di Fonterutoli is a collection of buildings with a variety of accommodation styles. We had reserved just a classic double room. We were in a beautiful old stone building called Limonaia, or Lemon House. Our room was on the second floor, and underneath there was a sort of greenhouse space with lemon trees in pots. Later I learned that north of Naples, the weather is too cold in winter to grow lemons without protection, therefore...lemon houses! 

Our room and three others were placed around a common living room, so this would be a good place for a family group to stay if you don't require a kitchen. If you do, the resort has apartment-style accommodations, too. 

Common Room

The room was quite large and had a wardrobe, a dresser, and a private bath. I was surprised to discover a king-sized bed! 

We had a casement window that looked out onto the little village's church and the rolling hills beyond. It's an active church - there were signs on the door for service times. 

We had another little window that looked out onto the alleyway and an office where you could arrange hiking tours. There was a massive wisteria vine growing on the side of our building and the purple blossoms hung like a banner over the alleyway. We were enchanted! This was exactly the kind of accommodations we were hoping for - peaceful and picturesque! One thing to know about Tuscany is that staying out here is much less expensive than staying in the city, and a charming historic place like this one in the states would have cost probably more than twice as much. Our room at Castello di Fonterutoli in April was less than $200/night and included breakfast, free parking, and discounts at the restaurant and winery.

Like most old buildings in Italy, there were no screens on the windows but even with the windows open, we never saw any bugs. It was April, so I guess the bugs will arrive with summer. We had AC and heat if we needed it. The bathroom was adequate (shower only). The charm fully made up for a lack of amenities that you'd expect in an American hotel. There was no TV, refrigerator, or safe, no USB ports by the bed, no coffee machine, but we were fine with all of that. I had requested a kettle ahead of time, and it was in the room waiting for me. (Yes, I was THAT person who actually brought her own coffee  and a pour-over thing to Italy where they have some of the best coffee in the world. My excuse is that to fully appreciate Italian espresso, I need to be fully awake.) At night, the only sounds we heard were birds, although on one night, they were pretty squawky and loud. I didn't mind. It was better than city noise!

Our reservations included breakfast which was served in a separate building that boasted a gorgeous view. In typical Italian style, there were various pastries and breads, but also scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, sausage, fruit, granola, and yogurt. 

After arriving, we took a nap. I've never been able to sleep on a plane, and we were tired. We were also not particularly hungry, so for supper we just got some bruschetta and a glass of wine at the enoteca on the property and called it a day. There is a very fine restaurant at Castello di Fonterutoli that gets great reviews, but it was booked up for the night we arrived, and on the following nights, we decided we didn't want to have to make reservations ahead but to see where we ended up. 

(I documented our first trip to Italy with all kinds of information about taking trains, electrical converters, ordering in restaurants, and more practical stuff here.)

Day 2