Today we set off on our wine tour to Tuscany!

To start off the morning, I fell down a flight of stairs. Lol.... I'm ok, but as my Grammy says, Grace is not my middle name (and it was before I started drinking in case anyone was wondering, I'm just a clutz.) So with my knee all bruised up, and Sean making sure to take the stairs before me from here on out so as to catch me, we were off!

Tuscany is about a 30 min drive from Florence and we were mainly in the city of Chianti. This whole time I thought Tuscany was a city, but apparently it's a region full of cities that make wine, olive oil, and honey.

We went to two vineyards or villas or whatever it is that people call it here., Our tour guides were awesome. And we were with a group of only 7 other people; It was a good range and all of us were from the states except for this old couple who were from England. The first vineyard we went to belonged to a prince of Italy. I guess even though he holds no official rank of any kind, but because someone in his family was the pope during the 18th century, this guy still has noble blood in his system so he is still called a prince. I will say that wine tasting in Tuscany blows Temecula and Napa out of the water. They had special cheese and honey ready for us to taste with each wine. And what we liked most was that once the tour guides explained the wine, they left to let us all eat and talk and drink and hang out as long as we liked. The 2nd vineyards was our favorite. The vines (and the family that harvests the wine) has been around since medieval times. How crazy is that??? To know your family line down from the 14th century or earlier? I can't even imagine. We ate lunch at the second vineyard and had homemade pasta with a fresh cherry tomato sauce. It was soooo good. We also had prosciutto and salami along with more cheese and honey to go along with it. We never knew to put honey on cheese before but apparently it brings out the flavor of the cheese. It was really tasty.

Once we got back into Florence we went to the opposite side of the Ponte Vecchio Bridge (where we are staying is the main tourist area) to find some dinner that would not be so "touristy." Sean picked out this amazing place. Reservations were apparently needed and they were booked, but there just happened to be two seats left at the bar and we were told we could eat there. It was like a fate telling us we were meant to eat here.

Because of our education of the day, we ordered different types of wine and ordered a cheese plate with honey as an appitizer. For the main coarse Sean ate a Swiss Chard ravioli with calamari and squid ink while I enjoyed fresh orrecchiete pasta with baby octopus and oregano. Both dishes were very good. (In case you are wondering, Sean and I have decided to try foods that we would not normally eat back home so we are being as adventurous as we can afford in terms of food!)

It was a wonderful day. Sean said it was probably one of his favorite days next to going to Murano.

Also, we ate more gelato today, this time Pistachio and Mandriano (Orange). Very very good! Tomorrow we will be going to the Academia to see the REAL David by Michelangelo! Can't wait!