Tuscany

We rented a car in Rome and headed up into Tuscany. We were staying at Fattoria di Rignana, which is an old farm converted into a B&B. On the way up, we stopped at Orvieto, a cute hilltop town.

Striped church in Orvieto

The place we were staying was in the middle of the countryside, surrounded by rolling hills and vineyards.

View from our B&B

We caught the villa's cat making a funny face

The infinity pool was amazing, and we made sure to take some time to relax there.

We wanted to check out San Gimignano and Siena, and the drive to these towns was picturesque as well. We'd come around a corner and see this, for example:

Here are a few pics from San Gimignano:

Siena had a beautiful public square with a giant clock tower, and more striped churches!

Even though this trip was less about seeing museums and monuments, we decided we might as well go to Florence since we were only staying about 45 minutes south of the city. We'd already done the must-see things while we were backpacking back in college, so we spent our time walking around the city, checking out the Duomo, and eating, of course.

The Pointe Vecchio

I took these shots of the river's reflection of the buildings

I love that this one looks like a watercolor

We had some amazing food in Tuscany. Our villa had a great rustic restaurant on the property, which was so good we ended up eating there two different nights.

This is where we had the best dish of our entire trip - in fact, we decided it was the best pasta dish we've ever had. It was called "Sedanini alla Norcina" - sedanini pasta with Tuscan sausage, onions, cream and black truffle shavings. We remembered towards the end of our meal to snap a picture:

We also had steak with fresh rosemary on top, which I'd never seen before. That was delicious as well.

Not to mention all the great Italian wine which accompanied most meals. :)

I'll be back with the last part of our trip soon.