Our Blog - Tuscany 2024 Trip - Italy
Our Spring trip this year was back to Italy, this time focusing on Tuscany and then back across the Emilia-Romagna region on the way home. Here is a view of the overall trip, starting in Toulouse and heading across Provence, past Nice, and then across the border. Then we kept hugging the Mediterranean past Genoa, heading inland near Pisa. Then a turn South to where you see all of the little circles in the lower-right-corner, which is all of the Tuscany places. Then we headed back North, past Florence as far as Bologna, where we went back West towards France, hitting Modena and Parma on our way past Turin. We decided to take the Northern route, which turned us through the Alps and into France near Chambéry, before heading south past Grenoble and Valence. Back into Provence before catching the same highway back home.
I have split the blog into 3 parts, which allows you to enjoy them in smaller pieces (and also the pages load faster). You can read straight down the page (for all 3 parts), or jump directly to Part 2 or 3.
Part 1
After a long drive, we stayed overnight at a nice B&B in Ventimiglia. We had stopped here before for lunch and I wasn't all that impressed, partly because they seem to be rather puppy-unfriendly when it comes to parks and beaches. They were happy with Lucy in the B&B and at the little pizza/pasta place where we had dinner. But the public parks are "no dogs" and the main beaches are also off-limits. However, Lucy was quite tired from the trip and had assumed her favorite sleeping position, so we didn't mind that she couldn't do much on the beach.
The next morning, as we left town, we stopped at a beach that specifically allows dogs, although it was a really horrible beach. She could walk around and sniff (and eat stuff, no idea what she got), and we found one little tiny strip where there weren't as many rocks so we could throw the ball a little bit. She also decided to take a dip in a little stream there, and of course, then rub sand all over herself.
The town of Chiavari was a lunch stop for us along the way ... but it had a really cute historic center with really nice buildings. It is a seaside community that is considered "part" of the Metropolitan City of Genoa (with 28,000 people in this suburb). A pre-Roman necropolis dating to the 8th or 7th century BC has been uncovered here. A castle was built in 1147 and the old town has lots of covered arched arcades and some buildings from the 13th century. We literally just stopped for lunch, but we may want to stop back by here again on another Italy trip to spend a bit more "quality" time in the old town.
Not yet quite in Tuscany, we stopped at the tiny hilltop village of Castelnuovo Magra. Quite small but it was a good place to stop.
Here is where the Tuscany part of the trip really starts. After crossing officially into Tuscany, we stopped at the walled city of Lucca which has all of it's walls still intact! Just one night there but we got to see quite a bit of what is inside the walls (and it is really pretty large inside the walls).
Leaving there, we headed up and up and up, until we got to the walled mountaintop town of Volterra, which actually dates back to the Etruscans in the 8th century BC!
One of our hotels was very puppy-friendly! As we checked in, they gave Lucy a special treat, and then we found more treats and some poop bags waiting for us in the room. They also have a specific "Do not disturb" sign that indicated that there was a dog in the room. How cute!!
We started the next day at another walled village, San Gimignano. This one was a little bit touristy, but we got there early before the hoards of tour buses arrived! Then another walled village, this one the tiny, tiny, tiny village of Monteriggioni before heading to Siena for a couple nights.
We stayed a couple nights in the former Etruscan settlement that became the city of Siena and took a Italian cooking class where we learned how to make 3 different pastas (by hand, no machines!!), a set of sauces, a couple meat dishes, and biscotti, before sitting down as a class to eat what we had prepared for dinner. We had a great time although our 2-hour class ended up being more like 4 1/2 hours! We got the recipes by email so we plan to have a little "pasta party" for our friends when we get home.
Then we headed into wine country! There are several wine regions that we will go through this trip, starting with the Montalcino and Montepulciano. In addition to tasting (and buying) some Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Brunello di Montalcino (both that are made with Sangiovese gapes), we also saw a few sites in the towns around the area. Our first stop was the village of Montalcino which is known for its Brunello wine.
Part 2
Just around the corner, we made a quick stop at the Abbey of Sant'Antimo before heading for our overnight stay in the somewhat "boutique hotel" town of San Quirico d'Orcia.
After a short stop in the village of Pienza, known for the Pecorino di Pienza cheese, we made another wine-village stop in the town of Montepulciano.
Our last stop in Tuscany was the city of Arezzo, supposedly one of the 12 most important Etruscan cities.
This was our last place in Tuscany and so I will leave the rest of the trip, in the region of Emilia-Romagna, for Part 3.
Part 3
While this is called my "Tuscany blog", the last part of the trip is not actually in Tuscany but the Emilia-Romagna region. At this point, the weather turned horrible. While it had been a little cool the previous couple of days, our travel day became wet. Not really many tourist things today .. we left Arezzo in the morning and stopped off in the Chianti area to do some wine tasting (and buying). We stopped at a place I had picked for lunch but unfortunately, they were not open for lunch so we just continued on (we will be VERY hungry for dinner this way). After an hour or so on the road, we stopped at a place near a lake that we could let Lucy run and play with her ball for a bit. Lucky for us, the rain stopped long enough for us to get her walk in, and then it started again as we finished the trip to Bologna. Then just relaxing until dinner, as it continued to rain.
We spent 3 days Bologna so that we had plenty of time to see the sights in my Bologna blog parts 1 and 2. We also took time out for an afternoon cooking class in Bologna where we made 3 more types of pasta and 3 different sauces. I guess now we REALLY have to have a fresh pasta dinner party!
After leaving Bologna, we headed across the Emilia Romagna region and through a "food area", known for Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, Balsamic Vinegar, and prosciutto ham from Parma. Our first stop was a tour of an organic Parmigiano Reggiano cheese producer, where we got to see the steps in the production from the happy cows to the finished product. We also took a tour of a family-run Balsamic vinegar factory and learned how that was made and did a tasting as well.
Lucy was very comfortable with all of the various hotels and apartments that we stayed at ... and spent time in her favorite sleeping position on one of the beds.
Another "food" city, this time the city of Parma, which is known for Prosciutto di Parma ham. One final stop in the town of Asti before heading towards home, going past Turin and up through the Alps using the Fréjus tunnel, into France. We grabbed a few pictures while we were driving through the Alps, showing a bit of the snow still up on the Alps and Lucy looking intently out the window.
We were planning on stopping again before our next stop, but it was raining so hard that we made a stop for lunch and then headed straight to our stop for the final night, Narbonne Plage for some beach time for Lucy. We had also planned to take a guided visit of a salt marsh nearby, but that was canceled due to the rain, so it was just a morning beach walk for Lucy before the short drive back home.