A long drive in the beautiful Tuscan hills towards Siena.......

We took a long drive in the countryside today.....at times made even longer by the wonderful lack of Italian road signs! There are no signs of turn left up ahead, the first you know of any sign is when you are right on the roundabout or intersection! So occasionally we would have to turn around after missing the turn! And then there is the way they number the highways! You are travelling on the SR 46 and need to stay on it to get to where you are going... Next thing without turning off anywhere there is a sign saying you are on the SS 11.... What the? Very confusing! Think they make things up as they go along! And the other quirky thing about travelling the roads here is that you go past a sign saying it is 21 km to a certain town, then around a couple of bends(no more than 500 metres) and another sign says it is 18 km away... Wow just travelled 3 km very quickly... And then after travelling for another 5 km see another sign and lo and behold the same town is now 28 km away. So we have been going backwards! Crazy!

Anyway even with all the crazy road signs we still got to where we were going eventually!

We kept off the auto stradas as we wanted to see more of the scenery, which was very beautiful, with rolling hills and vineyards and villas scattered through the hills.

We stopped off at San Gimignano, a gorgeous town in the hills and wandered around there for a couple of hours. A beautiful town, but it is sadly spoilt by being very very touristy.... There were bus loads of tourists, mainly loud Americans, and the Main Street was just packed. Heaps of yuppie shops in the Main Street too. We got out of the main area and wandered down the little streets, which was nice but really we have enjoyed the smaller villages we have seen more.

The views from the town were spectacular though. We had a lovely late lunch at a restaurant there, before heading off again towards Siena. By the time we arrived there it was after 6.30 pm so we decided to head back home before it got dark. Took about 3 hours to drive home, but didn't take any wrong turns this time!