Up and Away

Bill has been calling me helicopter rich for months because of the tour I booked today: a chartered helicopter flight to and from a winery where we'll get lunch and a wine tasting. This is my anniversary gift to David and Karen, but if they had decided not to join, I would have just gone by myself.

This tour is supposed to be from Florence, but they were happy to have the reduced air time to pick us up from the villa. Originally, they even planned to land here, but the owners changed their minds. Fortunately, it's only a few minutes drive to a landing area they could use. It's been threatening to rain (just today, only today) but the storms are a bit closer to Florence by our flight time.

Once we arrive, we get a brief tour of the grounds before being taken to the center of rings of newly planted vines, where a covered area holds a large table just for us.

The wine tasting includes a brief lesson on how to properly hold a glass and taste wine, and several courses, including cheese, bread, cured meats, a soup made from stale bread, a lasagna coated in truffle oil, and a milk gelato covered with coffee and balsamic vinegar. And also wine. There is a lot.

As an anniversary gift, they also bring a bottle of Prosecco to the table to drink while we relax for the afternoon and wait for our chariot (a single engine Eurocopter AS350) to bring us back. I also got attacked by a rooster for trying to photograph an especially large chicken, but no harm was done to either of us.

Back at Nerbona, we have a vegan dinner and a lovely sunset.

Classy

Today is our first full day at Nerbona, and we've got a cooking class and a day trip to Sienna on the docket. Somehow, regardless of time zone, I still wake up at 6:00, so I get to walk around the place before anyone else is up and about.

That first shot shows the entrance to my apartment, along with my patio and table. That table is where most of writing for this blog has been done, over first breakfast since the kitchen doesn't start serving breakfast until 8:30. How did I get to this life where I'm spending quiet mornings snacking on bread and cured meats in a shady spot in Tuscany?

This week should be interesting as I do not know most of the people in the group. And those I do know, I haven't seen outside of occasional video chat for more than 2 years.

After second breakfast, we caravan to a nearby grocery store and have entirely too much fun picking out snacks and booze for the week. Back at the villa, some of us check out the pool while others head out on day trips. They tell us the cooking class will start at 4:30, which is kind of a surprise - we thought it was at 1 and we'd hit Sienna after. We negotiate to a 5:30 start time and hop into a couple of cars to spend the afternoon, instead of the evening, in Sienna. The walk into town is a bit steep, but the city itself is nice and lunch is giant slices of pizza followed by gelato. We walk around and look at a few things, poke our heads in a few shops and then make our way back well ahead of class.

I am definitely out of my league in the cooking class. We are making pasta, and I'm at a table with David and Amanda, who both do far more cooking, including bread making. As the class goes on, the instructor and assistant spend more and more time on remedial training for me, eventually declaring my overly dry dough "better for lasagna noodles" than the noodles we're supposed to be making. My only solace is David over flouring his dough when he's rolling it out and getting the same speech about lasagna noodles. Of course, his are at least cut straight.

After we roll out and cut noodles, and assemble eggplant parmesan, we get shuffled out of the kitchen for a while so the real cooks can turn our efforts into an actual meal. This is my time to shine - I slip back to the apartment long enough to make a pitcher of Aperol spritz and show the group I am not without uses.

This is definitely not the batch I made.

And then there was driving

Today is a transit day. I'm meeting Nimish and picking up a rental car so we can make our way to Nerbona, the villa Karen found and organized the next week around as their 20th anniversary celebration with friends. Check out is at 1000, rental car pick up is at 1100. Check in isn't until after 1600 and we've been told the villa will not allow early check in or give us anywhere to store anything in advance of 1600. Fortunately, my hotel will happily take my and Nimish's luggage for a few hours, and the rental car company is fine with me picking up any time before 1630.

With arrangements made, I hop the tram back to the airport to meet Nimish and bring his luggage back to the hotel. We hop a bus for Boboli and enjoy some time walking through the gardens. It's insanely hot, though, so it's a brief visit.

Next, we walk through this side of town, and cross Ponte Vecchio, headed to Grom, a gelato place Nimish remembers from his prior trip. It's great, and keeps us going long enough to collect our bags and car and make the drive to our new accomodations. But first, we make the drive with only a few errors and practically no fearing for our lives. Google immediately attempts to get me to drive into a traffic limited zone, which I don't, but I'm sure it will get more chances.

At Nerbona, one building houses a set of apartements, and a second building is a small private home. David and Karen are in that one, and their party, as we continue to filter in, fills the apartments. Each has it's own name, and mine is Forno 1: Oven 1. The entrance is away from all the other apartments, and I have a small table outside to write and eat first breakfast at for the rest of the week.

A few people are ahead of us, but David and Karen's flight is delayed. We spend a relaxing afternoon poolside, a relaxing dinner catching up, and as the evening progresses, eventually the happy couple arrives. Some more guests will get in the following couple of days, but for now we all need a good night's sleep.

A Case of the Mondays

I set off early for the Boboli Gardens, first getting lost trying to find the local tobacco shop to buy bus tickets. When I eventually get to my destination, it's closed for the day. One of the hotel staff had said that there was another garden nearby that is even nicer, so I grab a gelato and head up a steep hill to that one. Which is also closed, but at least the sign says it's the first Monday of the month. As I head back down, I warn off another tourist making the same steep climb and we walk down together. She is also Australian, spending 6 months in Europe, planning to hike across the alps after a couple days in Florence and a few other brief stops. I tell her I'd have to quit my job to take a 6 month vacation, and she says that's exactly what she did.

I spend a bit of time shopping on this side of the river, which is supposed to be less touristy. I stop in a leather shop to try on a colorful jacket to replace my blue Christian Siriano since I damaged the collar, but the proportions aren't quite right. The sales lady has me try on a couple of other styles and then disappears for a bit. She returns with two jackets that don't look like anything else in the store. One is a black leather not-quite trench and the other is orange with a frilly collar. Both are leather on one side and suede on the other, fully reversible with pockets. The black looks nice and is quite sensible. The orange I am in love with. I ask about other colors and am told that any color in the shop is doable. I kind of like the orange, though. And I got rid of my orange trench recently because it was a bit snug. When I ask about pricing, it turns out that the two coats she brought out were special orders from a woman who later changed her mind, so I can have either of them for half price. They should be shipping me the orange one closer to my birthday - though not like I'll need it for a few months.

Next up is a stop at an attraction that is actually open: Museo Galileo, a building full of exactly the kind of science junk I love to gawk at.

From here, I head to SE:STO on Arno, the rooftop restaurant in the Westin hotel. There is a Ferrari parked out front, and every surface, including the ceiling, in the bathroom is marble, so I'm surprised that lunch includes a main, dessert, wine, and coffee for €35. And the food is pretty good. But really, this place is all about the view.

I spend the afternoon walking around, finding an adaptor that will let me pull images from the camera, repacking my bags, restocking on sunscreen, and eventually make my way back across town by bus to Piazzale Michelangelo for dinner at La Loggia. Also with a view.

After dinner, I walk down the slope, enjoying the changing scenery and catch a late bus back towards the hotel.