HELP! I’VE FALLEN IN (love with) TUSCANY AND I CAN’T GET UP

Two Months and “Freaking Out” (April 2010)

   I checked on Fiona’s new ristoranti, Il Cenacolo del Pescatore, http://www.cenacolodelpescatore.it/, and found that as beautiful as it is, we wouldn’t be stopping in for dinner--not unless we decided to forgo any food that week in Firenze—trendy-spendy.  It specializes in seafood, which sounded incredible, but too ‘rich’ for this ‘little old Oregonian’s’ blood.  We contacted Tuscan Trails at Fiona’s urging.  The owner, Todd Bolton (sounds like Michael’s non-singing little brother) was very helpful, and the web site looked great:

Hello David and Marianne,

Thank you for contacting us, and sorry to hear your guide sort of bailed out on you.  I currently have space on the 21st of June on my Daily Chianti tour.  To give you a little background about the trip, our tours run from 10:15 until about 4:30.  We meet at a point on the Arno River which is pretty centrally located to hotels in Florence and we depart from there.  Our tours are small group wine tours so you always have more personal attention with us, and our guides are trained Sommeliers (wine stewards) and have a vast knowledge of the areas you would be travelling to.

Once our tours depart it is usually about 30 minutes or so to the first winery where we explain the history of the winery, the wines produced there, and taste about 3-4 wines plus the olive oil.  From there we head to a small family run restaurant where you are served an excellent multi-course Tuscan lunch, which includes 2 appetizers, 2 pasta dishes, dessert, water wine and coffee. From there we head to the second winery, where you again taste 3-4 wines and oil, see the cantina and fermentation area of the winery, etc...  Then we head back to Florence.  The total cost for the tour is 125 Euro per person and this is all-inclusive.

If you have any other questions feel free to contact me directly, and also let me know if you would like to make the reservation and I will hold the spaces for you.

Thank you and best regards,

Todd Bolton

     After nearly two weeks without word, Economy Rentals returned a reply to my emails:

Ms Dimitra Koutantou:
Thank you for helping us with this situation. We are unsure if we can drive
the car out and back into the city. Sorry. We are not use to big city traffic,
especially Firenze.
Tentatively, we will need the car around 10 AM on June 26. We will either
drive via Montalcino to Lucca and return the car on July 2nd around 1 PM,
depending on the train schedule (to Roma), or we may bring the car back on June
30 (Wed. at about 2:30 PM). Parking in Lucca is the issue.
Please be patient with us until we find out a few things.
Hope your Easter was a good one.. Thank you,  David Beach Jones

Dear Mr and Mrs Jones,
So you will pick the car up in the office of Maggiore on 26th June at 10:00 am and you will drop it off in their office on 30th June at 14:30 pm?
Best Regards
Ms Dimitra Koutantou

Ms Dimitra Koutantou:
Please excuse our concerns. We are nervous about losing the car rental.
We have decided that it would be best if we only have the rental car until Wed.
June 30, as we had previously planned. We will bring it back by 2:30 PM.
Please let us know if this works for you on your end.
Thank you so much,
David and Marianne Jones

Ms Dimitra Koutantou:
Yes. That sounds great. Thank you so very much.
When you know the best routes to drive in and out of the city, let us know.
Thank you again,
David and Marianne Jones

The car rental company responded.  It sounded like it was definitely a “no frills” operation:

Dear Mr and Mrs Jones,

 We asked Maggiore to amend your reservation.

As soon as I receive their confirmation I will inform you.

About your questions they replied...

...client will be provided with a road map at time of pick up and rental desk staff is able to give him all the information concerning how to reach San Miniato or San Gimignano.
The city of Florence anyway is full of traffic restricted areas, and there is no access to the historical centre. It is important to keep an eye on the road sign you can encounter along the way.
Best Regards
Ms Dimitra Koutantou

Okay, we had a car, but we were definitely on our own.  You would think that a company would like to keep an investment safe.  Why would they just spend a customer out into the ‘harsh’ streets of Firenze, just expecting them to fend on their own.   

    Now that the plans had changed, I wanted to get to know as much as we could about Stazione Santa Maria Novella in Firenze.  After all, we would possibly be spending a good deal of our time there, since not only were we being dropped off there by Fernando on Saturday, June 19, but then the following Saturday, when we had to be there at 10 AM to pick up the rental, then the following Wednesday, to return it, and then in two more days, on Friday July 1^st, as we passed back through, changing trains, this time for the high-speed one, going back to Roma Termini.
     If you type in the name of the station into YouTube, you will get a variety of videos.  In case anyone hasn’t tried finding videos, mostly amateur, about their vacation destinations, YouTube is the place to do that.  Everybody has been somewhere and they have captured it on ‘charming’ home video that they are more than willing to share with the world—maybe too much sharing?  Anyway, I now knew what the station looked like now and how it is laid out.

 Wikipedia has great information on the building, and Frommer’s also has good 

information:   

Florence is Tuscany's rail hub, with connections to all the region's major 

cities. To get here from Rome, you can take the Pendolino (four daily; 

1 3/4 hr.; make sure it's going to Santa Maria Novella station, not Rifredi; you must 

reserve tickets ahead), an EC or IC train (24 daily; just under 2 hr.), or an interregionale 

(seven daily, around 3 hr.). There are also about 

16 trains daily from Milan (3 hr.) through Bologna (1 hr.). 

 Most Florence-bound trains roll into the Stazione Santa Maria Novella, Piazza della 

Stazione (tel. 800-888-088 toll-free in Italy, or 055-288-765; 

www.trenitalia.it), which you'll often see abbreviated as S.M.N. The station is on the 

north-western edge of the city's compact historic center, a 10-minute walk from the 

Duomo and a 15-minute walk from Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizi. There are 

loads of budget hotels immediately east of there around Via Faenza and Via Fiume. 

 With your back to the tracks, toward the station's left exit (across from track 16) 

and next to a 24-hour pharmacy you'll find a tiny tourist info office, open daily from

8:30am to 9pm, with a hotel-booking service (charging 2.30€-8€/$3-$10). The train

information office is near the opposite exit to your right, across from Track 5. The 

yellow posters on the wall inside the anteroom list all train times and routes for this 

and other major Italian stations. Another copy of the Florence poster is just inside the 

sliding glass doors of the second, main room. For personalized help, you have to take

a number from the color-coded machine (pink is for train information) and wait your 

turn -- often for more than an hour. 

Back at the head of the tracks, the ticketing room (Salone Biglietti) is located through

the central doors; at sportelli (windows) 9 to 18 you can buy ordinary, unreserved train 

tickets. The automatic ticket machines have taken some pressure off the ticket windows, 

but still attract long lines (when they aren't out of order). Around the corner from this 

bank of ticket windows is a smaller room where you can buy international tickets 

(window 7), make reservations for high-speed and overnight trains (windows 1-4),

or pay for a spot on the Pendolino/ETR express to Milan, Bologna, or Rome 

(window 5).  At the head of Track 16 is a 24-hour luggage depot where you can drop 

your bags (2.60€/$3.40 per piece for 12 hr.) while you search for a hotel. 

Exit out to the left coming off the tracks and you'll find many bus lines as 

well as stairs down to the underground pedestrian underpass which leads directly to 

Piazza dell'Unità Italiana and saves you from the traffic of the station's piazza. 

Validate Your Ticket – Remember!  If you're leaving Florence on the train, stamp 

your ticket in the yellow box at the start of the track before getting on the train. 

  Two very important things come out of reading the information:  One, where you can 

deposit you luggage—up to 24 hours, and, very important, when you get your ticket, 

STAMP YOU TICKET! before you get on the train.  As our friend Gina Melo told us, 

if you don’t validate the tick, you don’t stay on the train—molto brutto. 

     I also emailed everyone I could think of that we had contacted about rooms, 

reservations, tours, and reassured them that we were indeed going to be there.  That 

way, if they really weren’t serious about putting us up or taking us on a tour they could 

tell us now, instead of when we were actually in Italy.

     I had actually been telling a select few people at work, the church, and acquaintances 

around town that we were really going to Italy—in two months.  I couldn’t believe it my-

self.   Wow.  I remember telling the owner of a plant nursery that “we were going to be 

in Rome exactly two months from today” and I got kind of choked up; I recall it vividly.  

 I actually had little electrical ‘pricklies’ shoot up from the nape of my neck, over my 

head, down my forehead in two lines, through my eyes and checks.  So weird.  I remem-

ber it being an authentic ‘real-life’ moment.  The woman asked me for one thing; bring 

them lots of pictures to see.  I told her that should be no problem because I have been

stocking up on memory cards for my camera, especially every time there was a sale.   

I estimated I had about 40 GB of memory for pictures.  Do you think that will be enough?

     I broke my promise to myself not to buy flowers and perennials that year, but spring 

was so promising, and my beds looked so longingly at me to fill them with color.  I tried 

to draw he line at plants for the orto.  I could not trust anyone to water and keep up the 

garden, unless I was to pay a real gardener, but that wasn’t going to happen.  We did 

enlist our neighbor, Nelda, to cat-sit and get someone to mow the lawn once while we 

were gone.       We had tried to depend on Marianne’s sister, Kathy, in the past, but that 

always ended up a disaster for the animals and the dead plants.  There was always

something too important to do, like watch TV or sleep that seemed to distract her from 

feeding or watering.  We also had our friend, Myana set to ‘puppy-sit’ the silky.  It

didn’t hurt that both Myana and Phoebe absolutely loved each other.  We were a little 

concerned that the dog would completely forget us and not want to come home when 

we got home.

     Suddenly I realized that Dario Castagno was the best source for driving in Chianti.   

He would know how to get into Firenze and even to SMN Stazione.  The later part of 

April his fourth book “An Osteria in Chianti” was coming out, so I knew he would be 

very busy.

Dario:

Greatly anticipating "Osteria".  

We will be driving through Chianti (on June 30) from Montalcino to get back to Firenze.  Can you re-

commend a driving route that two very "novice" rural Oregonians (USA) can drive back into the city 

and get to SMN Stazione alive (and the car in one piece)

Grazie,

David and Marianne Jones

P.S.: Hope you are busy with success!

Ciao, from Montalcino Take the ss2. As soon as you arrive in Siena at the first traffic light turn left in direction Firenze, enter the highway and exit Badesse, then follow signs for Castellina in Chianti, then San Donato. Return on highway in direction Firenze. It realli is easy and panoramic Once in town follow the directions for centro stazione (but you have to leave the car...right?) Tell me where
Ciao
Dario