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

Firenze Tours—The Right Way, The Paolo Way (Late April 2010)

     Marianne located Paola’s name from Rick Steves Florence and Tuscany 

2010 book.   Paola Migliorini does personalized tours, a little spendy, but 

since we felt we needed a guide to take us around the Oltrarno on our last

full day in Firenze, I agreed 

with Marianne. 

Hi: My wife and I my need a half day tour of the south part of Firenze: Pitti, Oltrarno, 

San Miniato, etc. Marianne has mobility issues and can not do a great deal of walking. 

Possibly Friday June 25. 

Any information would be helpful.

Thank you, David and Marianne Jones 

David & Marianne buongiorno from Florence! 

25 June 

Yes we can customize the tour for you with our van 

9 am or 2 pm meeting at your hotel 4 hours driving guided tour with private van driver & guide, 

same person- Piazzale Michelangelo, San Miniato abbey inside, Santo Spirito area and Pitti 

Palace and visit the Palatina gallery inside 

65 euros x 4 hours total 260 euros total for both of you 

Due to the dollars/euros I offer same tour to you at 240 euros 

Entrance fees Not included 10 euros per person for Pitti Palace to book we need all infos 

requested in the attachment grazie Paola 

Paola: 

Thank you for responding.  We are very interested in a 4 hour tour at 2 PM on Friday, June 25th..   

Our problem is that Marianne is experiencing walking issues.  She can not climb many stairs and 

she can not walk for more than three or four blocks.  She is using a cane. 

The Oltrarno and points south of the Arno are what we would like to see. We would like to do 

the Pitti and Boboli Garden on our own.  We are thinking of these specific places for an afternoon 

tour 2 PM:  San Spirito, Brancacci Chapel, Piazzale Michelangelo, and finally San Miniato, 

where we were hoping to stay for Mass (5:30 PM). However, we are concerned that, one, 

there is a way to drop Marianne off at the door of the church, and two, if we are left at San Miniato, 

can we get a taxi back to our apartment?  Would the guide be able to return us at 6 PM? Sorry 

if we sound helpless, but we do hope we can work this out without it being a "mal di testa" for the 

guide.  We will be at the Pitti at 2 PM and our apartment is on piazza Cimatori. 

Please let us know. 

Thank you, 

David and Marianne Jones 

Paola Migliorini <info@florencetour.com> wrote: 

Your itinerary if ok for us 

- Santo Spirito - Brancacci Chapel (I will make reservation for it) 

- Michelangelo square 

- San Miniato 

I will wait for you at San Miniato untill 6 pm and drive back at your apartment in Via Cimatori in 

the center You wish to be picked up at 2 pm at the Pitti Palace at my right? I promise there are 

not many stairs and not much walking on this tour as with our license van we can park close to 

your sights 250 euros for both of you (as there is extra time)plus entrance fees for Brancacci 

Chapel to book I still need all infos requested in the attachment grazie 

Paola 

Paola: 

This looks great.  Thank you! 

Yes, we will meet you at the Pitt at 2 PM.  We will be having lunch somewhere close.   

Where exactly do you want us to wait? 

- Our tours don’t include: entrance fees, meals and gratuities 

EUROS CASH PAYMENT AT THE END OF THE TOUR  €258? 

How much do you need for the entrance fees?  €8 (€4 each)  You will make the reservation, 

correct? 

Grazie, David and Marianne Jones 

Grazie for your booking! 

25 June 

2 pm meeting at the main entrance of the Pitti Palace with our van 

I make reservation for Brancacci chapel hours tour 250 euros cash payment at the end of 

the tour + 4 euros per person for Brancacci Chapel When you have your Italian phone 

number grazie to give it to me I would like to have the street number of your apartment in 

Via de Cimatori too if possible (just in case I need to reach you and your phone for some 

reason don't work) 

Paola: 

This is embarrassing.  The rental company, Tuscany Accommodations has not given us 

an actual street number.   I will email and get it. I do have a picture of the building the 

apt. is in... Grazie, David Jones 

I have recognize the building, I don't even need the number anymore, this 

is right next to Birreria Centrale and nice local trattoria 

I do need your Italian mobile phone when you will have it ciao Paola

From Fiona we contacted Todd Bolton about a wine tour because Donatella 

had never bothered contacted us again since Christmas, after promising the 

tour of “our dreams”.

Hello:
My wife and I are planning on a week long stay in Firenze, June 19 through 25. We had
planned to take a day long tour of Chianti, but we think that our guide forgot us. We haven't heard from her since Christmas.
We were given your name by a friend's niece, who recommends you highly. Your website looks great,
but we sure would like to know some details about the daily tour with 8 people. Our free day looks like Monday, June 21.
We would appreciate any information you can share with us. We are hoping this works out. We will be looking forward to hearing from you.
Thank you,
David and Marianne Jones

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 traveling 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

Todd:
This is great.  Unless, and I doubt it, the other guide contacts us we will go with you.
Marianne is having some walking issues (she will be slow and lots of stair are hard on her) so let us know if there will be a problem.  We are staying about three blocks nord of Piazza Signore (Pzz. Cimatori) so we'll probably be able to walk to Ponte Vecchio.
I am curious to find out which two winery's you have planned to visit.  Do you know now?
Thanks so much. 
David and Marianne Jones

Walking is pretty much at a minimum on the tour, and if she wants to sit some or the walking out she easily can throughout the day.  The two wineries we typically visit are the Castello del Trebbio and the Fattoria Selvapiana.  If you would like more information or to make the reservation let me know.
Todd

Todd:
Sing us up.
Just need to know where the pick up is to see if Marianne can walk there.
Can you let us know?
Thank you, David and Marianne Jones

Hi David and Marianne,

I have blocked the two spaces for you on June 21st. All you will need to do is show up at the meeting point (time and place written below).  You can simply pay on the morning of the tour.  Tour cost is 125 Euro and this is all inclusive (guides will need to be paid in Euro as we do not accept credit cards).  Please email me a confirmation that you have received this email and that you will be joining the tour on June 21st, and we'll look forward to seeing you then. Thank you

Directions to meeting point: 

We meet at 10:15 at the north east corner of a bridge on the Arno river called the Ponte Alle Grazie.  To arrive at this bridge, what you need to do is go to the Ponte Vecchio (the bridge with all of the gold shops on it), stay on the train Station side (also the same side of the river as the Duomo), facing the Ponte Vecchio you will want to go to the left on the road which runs along the Arno and walk up to the next bridge. This is the Ponte Alle Grazie.  We will have a silver ford transit 9- pasenger van parked on the corner of this bridge and a street called the Lungarno Delle Grazie.  I have attached a link to a map of the area so that you can see the bridge.   If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me any time via email or on my cell at 340-930-1794 (add the prefix +39 if calling from outside of Italy). 

Thank you and best regards,

Todd

     I decided to give the Tuckerberry’s one more “poke”.  I went to their website and found that Jill was currently in a production of the new musical “The Kid” by the same people that brought us twisted bit of childhood TV “Avenue Q”.  I wanted to get their ideas on what we shouldn’t miss in Spoleto and tell him what we thought of his performance as Nelson Lehman in the “Brazil” episode of “Laws and Order”.  Marianne is a die-hard fanatic for the series; that is the only thing on when I come home from school.  He replied:

Go to the Palazzaccio, you may see us.  Jill's show runs to the end of May and we'll be getting there around the time that you do.  We may just miss you, actually.

 Have a great trip,

Mike

One last attempt with Dario…

Thanks for your help with driving through Chianti. 

Sounds like Dievole would be too much for you that morning. 

How can we get a copy of Osteria and Too Much Wine?  Can we get it passing through...?

Great success with the book.

Saluti!

David and Marianne Jones

     The whole process of reserving a time or ‘tour’ as they like to call it at the Pisa was confounding, but not daunting.  I didn’t understand at first what the Pisa website was doing—why at certain times it would be up and running and other times I would get a “problem loading page” message.  By hit and miss I found that the website was up from 11 PM to about 9 AM PDST.  They apparently close down the site outside their business hours, which is day time for us in the US. 

     So on Sunday night, May 16^th, I waited for Pisa to come on line so I could book and 9 AM Torre climb July 1, 2010.  Now I still kept doing the math, counting back 45 days from the tour date and I would get Tuesday May 18^th.  I figured the 17^th because it’s nine hours later in Italy.  But I was a little puzzled by the 16^th.  I visited the site at 11 PM on the previous night, May 15^th and sure enough the calendar on the website said June 30^th.  Great, so now all I had to do was start up until 11 PM our time, 8 AM Italia time, book and buy the ticket (biglietto).  That morning, Sunday after, getting to church at 8 AM to practice the organ, so I would be ready for the 9 AM service, Marianne and I part-took in our first mid-day espresso; a ritual that would be repeated several times over the next month and a half.

     Unfortunately, it ‘wired’ me so much that I was absolutely awake at 11 PM—no problem.  I fact I was so awake, I had to take a Benadryl to ‘wind’ down to sleep, 

because I had school the next day.  This was another ritual that was to be repeated more often than I would have liked, but I didn’t have an allergy attack, and I nearly slept 

through 9 hours of plane travel.  Chemicals —modern miracles.  I realized then that a 

sleep mask, ear plugs, and a sleep aid were going to be my best friends.  Hopes of 

getting a tranquilizer prescription were not to materialize, because I have a doctor that 

just won’t prescribe things like that. 

     At 10:54 PM the Opera Pisa website came on line.  I maneuvered there the calendar and reserved one ticket for 9 AM on July 1, 2010 for E 17.  I had to run to the dining room table where our travel binder and the passports were, because they asked your passport number.  I had a bit of a problem with the phone number field, but after waking Marianne up and going through international prefixes and 00’s and 001’s, it was just a simple matter of not putting any dashes in the number.  When you confirm and pay, a separate pop up has your ticket with and barcode and a button to print.  I printed two copies just in case.  An email confirmation followed not long after. 

     So at 11:11 PM PDST I now was set to climb the leaning fucking tower of Pisa!  Holy crap-ola!  A life long dream now to be realized.  Everything was now set in place for the grand tour.  With the exception of treno biglietti and, oh, now an up date on the rental car from a Ford Fiesta—a no-brainer--to a French sedan, it was all complete.   

We could leave tomorrow.  We had done it.  Booked our dream—spent my retirement money—but book the dream anyway.  Now, I thought, if l could only get to sleep.

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

A Volcano No One Can Even Pronounce! (Mid-April 2010)

     Suddenly there was a ‘global’ concern and a potential road block for the big Italian trip.  One morning in April we tuned into the Today Show and Matt Lauer was talking about a volcano who’s name he couldn’t even get his mouth around that was disrupting air travel in Europe.  In fact it was wreaking havoc with sports teams and travel plans all across the continent.  Teams were taking trains and other transport because airports were closing down.  The ash from Eyjafjallajökull was to blame.

Wikipedia: The 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull were a series of major volcanic events that occurred at Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland. Seismic activity started at the end of 2009, and led to a volcanic eruption on 20 March 2010. A later eruption from 14 April 2010 led to widespread disruption of air travel in Europe from 15 April, affecting the travel plans of millions of passengers.

Now an act of God could keep us from flying to Italy…!?  

Waiting For Pisa

     One of the last things that had to be done before plans and preparations for Tuscany was complete was to reserve a place in line for the infamous leaning Tower of Pisa.  This is thee one and only icon of Italy known throughout the world.  This is Italy!  The trick is to get a booking.  You can only reserve 45 days in advance and I personally wasn’t going to miss getting my place in line and at the time I wanted.  It would be the last thing that I would seriously have to make the effort to do, except catching the train back to Rome and Fiumicino. 

May 18th, that’s Mount St. Helen’s Day for us folks out west, was the date, 45 days before the ascent on July 1st. Although, with the time being 8 or 9 hours ahead, I was having a confounded time trying to figure out if it would really be the 17th or the 18th.  Then would it be the stroke of midnight Italy time or 9 AM the beginning of the work day or 9 hours earlier than their midnight or start of the business day.  Confusing, right?

     I was so confused.  I visited the link to the ticket office, http://www.opapisa.it/en/plan-your-visit/practical-information/tickets.html or biglietteria on-line della Torre pendente di Pisa.  I tracked it almost daily to make sure I would not miss my opportunity to reserve a 9 AM tour.  I know that sounds a little anal, but hey, it’s the leaning tower of Pisa.  I wasn’t going to blow this once in a life-time thing.

Then it happened. On the 5th of May, the Pisa website crashed. I logged on for a week and the page would not load. I was starting to get concerned because I knew I had to book on the 17th or 18th of May to get a reserved torre tour and that was a week away. Through the National tourist board of Italy, I found a link to the Official
Tourism Website for Pisa Proveince: www.pisaunicaterra.it info@pisaunicaterra.it
Meanwhile, I was hard at work trying to get tours arranged in Firenze and seeing if Candace and Ferenc Mate (Mate Winery--Montalcino) would let us visit their estate. I felt that Candace really knew the day to day operation of the business and Ferenc basically wrote books and flew here and there for interviews.

David,  

If I'm there (in NYC now with editor of new novel) or if Candace is there, you 

are more than welcome to stop by for a glass of wine and gossip. Write us a few 

days in advance to remind us and set a time. 

all best 

Ferenc 

On 9 May 2010, at 21:05 

Dear Candace, Ferenc & Peter: 

Plans for our Italia-Tuscano tour are complete and we will be leaving in one 

month.  From Ferenc's e-mails it sound like you are all very busy.  We are 

hoping that there might be some time to visit you.  We completely understand how 

much work is involved with the winery and writing, etc.  We will be staying in 

Montalcino June 28 and 29 and leaving on the 30th. 

We are hoping the ash from Iceland dissipates and no new volcanoes start.  Do 

you have any idea how much wine we can transport back to the USA?  We are 

bringing our wine opener just in case we have to drink it before we fly back 

home... 

Thanks so much,   David and Marianne Jones 

Dear David and Marianne - 

Thanks for your e-mail. Yes, we're all busy, but we set aside a couple of hours 

at the end of each day for tastings and sales. So, just let us know which day 

you'd like to come by and we'll be expecting you.  

Sorry, but I don't know how much wine you're allowed to take back. We've got 

styrofoam containers for 3 bottles, if you need them. Or, I can ship wine to the 

states. The shipping costs are a lot, but at least the wine costs less (I don't 

have to add our 20% VAT tax to wine that is shipped). 

Shipping for 6 bottles: €99  for 12: €155 

Thanks again, 

Candace 

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