My colleague suggested that i visit Florence and he was so confident that it wouldn't go wrong . Florence , one of the important city of the region of Tuscany lived up to the expectations.
I've always wanted to visit italy , this trip was a dream come true in many ways.
Italy is a fascinating country , its rich historical heritage combined with great food and top class fashion makes it a much sought after tourist destination.
My visit to Florence did not come as an accident , it was well planned and in my tourist series , this place was already on the cards even before i started my first trip.
To start with , any trip to Italy means lot of homework to do especially due to its history and heritage . So i dutifully bought rough guides to Tuscany& Umbria .
I started to read a lot and mark out places that i had to visit. The only problem was given Tuscany was so large i was left with a slight confusion on whether i should base myself in Pisa or in Florence.
After good amount of deliberation , i chose Florence . Once i chose my base, it was now time for preparing the logistics.
I used trip advisor to choose the hotel , i must admit that the tool is really good and when put to the right use , it provides lot of benefits.
I chose my hotel based on trip advisor recommendation and it was spot on. Once logistics, including flights fell into place , it was time to formulate a itinerary .
I read through the whole of rough guidebook on Tuscany , looked up Florence tourism board website , which had plenty of recommendation and i must say it was good.
A roughly planned itinerary for the three days , meant nothing was set in stone and i was flexible to change the plan.
Just the day before the trip , i asked my wife to pack few items with a view of visiting a friend, little did she know that i was just preparing her to give her a huge surprise.
On the day itself , my better half got to know the whole plan only when we reached the airport , she genuinely was pleased and was blushing all the way through to Pisa because we were on our way to Italy a land of Pizza and Pasta which she loves quite a lot.
We boarded the flight and landed in Pisa Gallileo Gallile Airport, which in itself was not bigger than our Chennai Kamaraj Domestic airport , it almost looked like an airport in the middle of a village.
We came out of the airport in less than ten minutes and to our dismay , we were both saying where is the Italian beauty , this looks like a shanty town.
We were to be proven wrong later in the day. It took us an hour to visit Palais Di Miracoli , the place where the world famous leaning tower of Pisa exists , we along with whole host of tourists spent the next few hours.
Our next stop was Florence, which was some 85 kms away. We promptly took a train from Pisa's central station to Firenze ( as Florence is called in Italy) . Our train took all of an hour and twenty minutes to cover the 85 km's . We rolled into Firenze SMN railway station.
Once in the station, we had little trouble in finding our hotel , which was slap bang next to the famous Florence Duomo.
We checked into our hotel and were ushered into our room , which was quite nice with free WIFI and LCD TV's. This hotel was the best of all the places we stayed. A conclusion both me and my better half agreed to.
The evening was spent walking along the banks of River Arno , visiting the great coffee shops of Florence and having sumptuous biscuits.
We retired to our room early after a solid meal in a near by Restaurant as we had a early start to make the following day.
Next day we were off early . Our first port of call was San Gimignano , a town of historical importance to Florence as this was the town which was used as Fortress when Florence captured Siena in early 12th Century. Then we were off to visit Siena & the wine making region of Chianti.
Siena presents the rustic past , all its walls , the narrow alleyways were standout features.
We first visited Banque Monte De Paschi , the birth place of banking or the worlds first bank established in the middle of 14th century , still exists proudly in Siena.
After it , we visited the Siena central square where the world famous Palio takes place every July & August. After that we visited the central church before we heading off to Chianti.
The worlds famous Red Wine The Chiantico comes from this place but the region produces some of the worlds best wines and olive oil.
It took us about an hour to reach from Siena to Chianti region. Chianti region is know for its mountains as the grapes for the wines are grown on top of the hills due to the need for better moisture.
In Chianti we visited the Tenuta Casanova wine farm , whose owner left a well paid job in a big super market chain about 20 years ago to take up his hobby full time which was Wine making.
http://www.tenutacasanova.it
The owner (whose name skips my mind) spoke his heart about the wine making and olive oils . Given both of us were teetotaler , we just stuck to tasting olive oil & home made breads.
At about 30 minutes past eight we reached Florence and made our way to dinner . We just had pasta, penne with arabiatta & Ravioli , it was the best ever pasta i have ever tasted .
Satisfied, we headed back to our room and crashed.
Next morning , i was dealt with a big blow , our flight was cancelled. We frantically tried to get hold of the airline but in vein . However we were lucky to have availability in another flight , although we had to shell out extra money but hey ho this happens and took it in the chin.
Flight issue sorted out, we had lot of time in hand , we headed off to the village of Fiesole, this has to be the icing on the cake of the entire trip.
The quite village tucked up in the high hills provided us with some of the most spectacular views of florence .
Satisified we headed back to Amerigo Vespucci airport in Florence, which was nothing more than just a tiny airport and as they say , small is always beautiful and it surely was .
We checked in and were off to the departure gate in less than ten minutes . We waited for our flights and reminisced about our trip .
Overall it was one of the best and the most satisfying trip
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