Tuscany
So, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Toscana?
For me, it’s family dinners at historical Italian villas with olive groves and endless grape hills, it’s the smell of warm grass and wood, it’s old furniture and “worn” aesthetics that somehow make absolute sense, bringing to life that “Call me by your name” vibe. Basically, its this mix of things that are very down-to-earth and a little fairytale-like at the same time. In Toscana there are hundreds of villas and atmospheric hotels for any budget, the hard part though is to avoid overly curated and overpriced experiences, and not to miss a gem in the flow of Airbnb listings with unstyled photos made on iPhone. Also, don’t be like us, book an advance. We booked about 4-5 days before check-in, and honestly, just got lucky.
Anyway, what do we have here… First, Toscana is pretty large, with mostly narrow countryside roads, and tons of places to discover. We had just a few days in the region, and I was deeply pregnant and getting tired too fast, so I took a screenshot of the map around the hotel we were staying in and asked chat GPT what was interesting around. We didn’t do anything crowded, no Florence or Pisa and keep in mind that summer is hellishly hot in Toscana. Here I’ll show you Villa Sermolli, which has, to put it mildly, unremarkable IG and website, but proved to be a treasure, a little bit of the village Vinci (guess which Leo was born there), and surrounding countryside, with pears to die for, and the only tasty wine grape I ever tried. There is also a thermal resort town 15 minutes away from Buggiano Castello, where the villa is located, but I was too tired to take photos. I can also recommend one more hotel in Castello.
the olive groove that surrounds Leonardo da Vimci's birth place
these pears, oh the taste of childhood.
