Day 18:

We had our breakfast at around 8am, facing the luxuriant garden at the veranda but, as it was pouring, we had it indoor. We checked out of the hotel at about 9am and drove our way to The Mall, a factory outlet tucked at the outskirt of Florence.

It was about 2 hours drive from Siena. We drove along the Chianti region in our tiny Nissan March. But, the rain was intermittent and thus, the view was not as captivating as it'd have been if it was a drive under the clear, blue sky. Nevertheless, God surprised us with moments of breath-taking scenery of green plains of grass, dotted with the typical cypress trees and houses, along its winding roads.

We arrived at The Mall at around 11am plus. It was kinda like an enclave of boutique outlets. It wasn't very huge in area and looked rather easy to "conquer" all the outlets. Yet, it took us about 3 over hours (including a 45min lunch in between) to complete the entire area. It was quite a fruitful shopping experience at the end of the day.

We packed our items into the car and set off for our hotel in the Chianti region - La Canonica Di Cortine. The drive in search of the hotel was very beautiful. As dusk encroached, the scenery was most memorable with trees and groves, shaded with green, yellow, orange-brown, yellowish-red, all combined under the fading sunlight and it looked very much like a classic painting depicting the scenery of a countryside during the season of fall.

We arrived at our hotel at around 4pm plus. It was bed and breakfast style and it was really amazingly wonderful; it afforded great view of Tuscany and the room was very spacious. We thanked God that we made the right call to book this place and its availability when we wanted it, as we made the reservation only about a week ago.

Dinner was extremely wonderful. We went to this restaurant, La Locanda di Pietracupa which was about 1km drive from our hotel. Emma enjoyed the meal so much so that she claimed that it was by far one of her best dining experiences in this trip.

As there was nothing much to do around here, we snugged ourselves under the duvet and decided to bed down for the night.