The Mikels' Chronicals: The Tuscan countryside and an evening in Florence

Setting our alarm early in an attempt to watch the sunrise, we failed miserably. Staying up too late last night did not help the situation. But, we figured, we have two more mornings where we will attempt again.

Today marked Day 6 of our trip. We set forth on a journey to the countryside and set up a tour at a local castle/olive farm/vineyard. We took a six person guided tour and learned about the heritage of the land, along with the process which takes place to produce wine. Being engineers, we actually found this fascinating. Our guide’s name was Gio and would probably be at the top of our list of guides all time. He was in his 50’s and had passion for Tuscany and the wine making process. He had married an American, so he had very good English and could talk with a New York accent like he was a native. The vineyard we visited was approximately 550 acres. The farm/vineyard had been established in the early 1500’s and has been producing meat and wine ever since. It is pretty amazing all the work and techniques that it takes to produce the wine. Gio showed us the cellar of the vineyard owner and there were thousands of bottles of wine in it which were hundreds of years old. Many of the bottles would sell for thousands of dollars. Gio said the wine likely would not taste good, but it was drinking history. Not sure that is worth a thousand dollars in my opinion.

This is the enemy Castle/vineyard of the place we toured today

The last remaining grapes from the season

These grapes will be made into holy wine and only 1/3 of what you see here will be used

Nice shot of pond behind Castle

Evil cat that bit Britt - Britt is now purring like a cat - not sure if that is good or bad

Once the tour was finished, we drove around the countryside before finally turning on the GPS to navigate us back to our B&B. The peace and tranquility was trumped briefly by shotguns, as it is currently wild boar hunting season. Plenty of hooting and hollering could be heard amongst the firing as well.

This evening we decided to head back to Florence to walk the streets and of course grab a bite to eat. Britt wanted to revisit the sandwich shop, and although the sandwich this evening wasn’t nearly as great as yesterday’s, it was still outstanding! Gelato also found it’s way to our hearts this evening, not once, but twice. We had visit two stands which were recommended in our book and on TripAdvisor. Both ranked in the Top 3 for both of us, but likely not our #1. We did revisit the touristy spots to capture some fantastic nighttime shots, courtesy of both of our amateur photography skills.