Chocolate icecream for breakfast to use up the remaining groceries seemed like a great idea as we don't like to waste good icecream and we couldn't take it with us.
A leisurely walk down the road after a sleep in, had us picking up the rental car and heading off mid morning into the Tuscany region.

It turned out shortly afterwards however, that chocolate icecream for breakfast wasn't such a good idea, as Scott's reappeared - fortunately out the window (thank goodness!).

We headed first to Volterra a town that was the film site for some of the vampire movies in the "Twilight" series. April an avid fan was keen to find the square that she knew from the movie and a little put out to find it closed because a different movie was currently being filmed. It was quite neat to see some actors in medieval costume though.

The town had a delightful centre with stone walled passages, and we looked around the shops for a while. The area is also a source for alabaster stone - a very soft stone that is good for carving and sculpting. We tried to find the Alabaster museum but could only find the factory showroom and shop - nevertheless we saw some lovely ornaments, sculptures and light shades.

The scenery as we moved on was just beautiful - the quintessential tuscan landscape, olives, grapes, fields, rolling hills and cypress trees.

Our next stop San Gimignano was very touristy, and  there were quite a lot of people - though we heard a tour guide saying it wasn't busy at all. It was another lovely stone walled town, and we enjoyed browsing the art shops - eventually picking out a series of 3 very small paintings to take away as a lovely memory of Tuscany. Another feature of this town was two Torture Museums - small but with one ticket providing access to both Scott was keen to check them out, so the two of us made our way around learning about all the different items - a little disturbing, but also somewhat interesting. Not nice to find out that some are still in use by a number of governments around the world.

We arrived at our hotel 10km out of Siena  in time for the kids to have a swim in the heated pool, while I tried to prepare dinner on a two element cooktop, smaller than the one in the campervan. It was an apartment with a "kitchenette" but with no sharp knives or breadboard and not even a fully cutlery set so self catering was a bit of a challenge - at least there were enough plates for everyone. On the bright side, the pool was great, the location peaceful and we had a hotel buffet breakfast to look forward to in the morning.

Darryl - More quaint Italian medieval villages.

April: Great gelato today from a world champion shop (5 years running) - I tried grapefruit, and also Raspberry with Rosemary.

Scott - In the torture museum we saw jaw breakers that break your teeth and skull and then your brain squeezes out. The guillotine and the chair with spikes all over it were neat.

Darryl: When is an Italian not speeding? When they are stationary.
Driving in Italy is interesting - we're being overtaken all the time because no-one sticks to the speed limits, they rarely use indicators, seem to dislike driving entirely in one lane, and will pass you with oncoming traffic even when there is no room to pull in - and then pull in anyway expecting you to get out of the way.