Our last night in Paradise

At first I wondered where all the fabulous green hills were. 

For me, this was the most anticipated place on our itinerary.  But getting there was hectic and making sense of the directions was a bit confusing although Brian had printed out plenty of instructions.

During the entire hour and a half drive, my finger throbbed miserably and I wondered if I might lose the fingernail.  When we loaded the suitcases in the back of the car, I got my finger nearly permanently wedged between my sisters suitcase and the lousy wheels on the thing.  I yelped and knew the worse was yet to come when I had to yank my finger out otherwise I would be carrying the danged thing by one poor fingernail the entire trip.  I cursed my sister when I finally got up the courage to pull my fingernail out from the evil thing.

An hour later we slowly made our way up some small hillsides.

Where are the valleys, where are the hills, where is the lush countryside?  My heart began to sink a little thinking I was going to be more than disappointed in my expectation.

THEN, as the road narrowed and curled and "ssss" around, the descent was barely noticable.   As we rounded curve after curve, the edges of the road dropped off to breaktaking views.

I wanted to tell Brian to look, but I was afraid he would and I didn't want his eyes off the crazy winding roads.

We had long decided to stay in Volterra after watching a Rick Steves show on Tuscany and he named it his favorite.  An agriturismo is a working farm and after much research, we verified San Lorenzo Podere to be the perfect location for our stay by seaching on flickr.com and finding Rnout's pictures and posting a comment.  He's from Amsterdam and was very helpful in helping us make our decision.  Although flickr is a photo sharing site, it's a great way to get feedback from people who have visited anywhere you might want to go.

By law, an agriturismo must make more profit from their farm than their hospitalities.  San Lorenzo Podere is an olive farm.  The dining room, back in the 1200's was originally a monastery for a small group of monks.  The frescos can still be seen near the window.

When we arrived, we were exhausted from the train rides and the car trip, so we all took a long nap.  Our room was next to the dining room and around five we were all awakened by the amazing aroma emanating from supper being prepared from Marinella and her staff.  Each night there was a full seven course genuine Tuscan slice of heaven.  Brian was hooked on the spaghetti carbanara which is unmatched throughout the world.

The peace and quiet was exactly what we needed in the middle of our trip and "our" agriturismo was perfect with it's breathtaking views and natural pool.  We soon learned a natural pool meant that should you decide to swim, you would likely be joined with the melodious frogs that would sing a beautiful frog chorus for the guests.

Surrounding us was the olive fields.

Brian was lucky enough to return in October when the olives were ripened and caught this picture of Marinella harvesting the olives.

On his second trip, Brian brought me back a bottle of San Lorenzo's olive oil.  Of course I can never use it, although I would love to.

Sadly, it was one year ago tonight we were spending our last night at this heavenly place, planning our next adventure to Rome the next day.

There is more to tell about Volterra and Tuscany itself, but I'll save that for the next post.  Needless to say, this was a tie for the top favorite place in Italy. 

I can't wait to return.