17 amazing days in Tuscany, Positano and Rome – June 2014!
 

We had such a good time on our trip to Northern Italy in 2012 that we decided to plan another trip to Italy with our friends for a couple of weeks during the spring of 2014. We wanted to go in May but because of all the grandkid’s graduations we couldn’t fit it in until June. We like to do a lot of research and we eventually came up with an itinerary of a week at an agritursimo near Siena, two nights in Florence, then four nights in Positano and finishing with four nights in Rome. We made reservations for all the places we were going to stay, the car rental and all limo services. We bought tickets online for the Accademia, the Uffizi, the Borghese Gallery and a Vatican Museum tour. We also bought our train tickets online.

We rented a car at FCO upon arrival and drove to our agriturismo (we were in Apt. Le Logge http://www.lucignanosecondo.it/ ) with a stop in Orvieto for several hours on the way there. We turned the car in at the Florence airport at the end of the week and took a taxi to our B&B (http://www.ladimoradegliangeli.com/map-bb-florence.php ) near the duomo. When we left Florence, we took an Italo train to Naples and had a limo service meet us at the train station to take us to our hotel (http://www.edenroc.it/en/ ) in Positano. When leaving Positano, we had the same limo service take us back to the Naples train station and took a Trenitalia train to Rome. We caught a taxi from Termini to our apartment (long story but we EVENTUALLY ended up staying at this apartment which was NOT the one we had reserved ( http://mymagicrome.com/stelletta-ii.html ).

This was our seventh trip to Europe (fourth to Italy) so you would think we would know what we were doing right? Well it turns out we made a few mistakes on this trip. The worst was thinking that the temperature would be somewhat close to the average temperature for that time period - so we did not make sure we had air conditioning in the agriturismo where we stayed. Bad Mistake! It was HOT –the temperature was in the mid to high nineties almost every day of the week we stayed there. We liked the place a lot but it was HOT! I think it was a near record heat wave for that week and it was HOT! Did I mention it was HOT!

Our group ranges in age from early to late sixties. Another mistake we made was thinking we were all still in our fifties. We didn’t think we had a very aggressive itinerary planned – drink lots of wine, eat lots of food, a hike here and there, walk around a few hill towns, go to a few festivals, tour a few museums – you know – easy stuff. Well we did all that stuff but we were totally exhausted when we got home. Even though we took lots of water, wine and coffee breaks throughout the day and we really enjoyed everything we did - we needed to have spent more time just chilling out at the places we were staying. I think the terrible heat took a lot more out of us than we wanted to admit but we all just kept soldiering on.

As I said earlier, we really enjoy the planning phase of a trip and we thought we had this one nailed. We had about a year and a half to plan the trip and we had done a lot of research on things to do at each of our locations, travel logistics, restaurants - you name it and we had researched it. We had done a LOT of research on where we wanted to stay (both the place itself and the area it was in) and picked places that we thought would fit our travel style. Everything worked out pretty well until the taxi dropped us off at our apartment in Rome. As we walked towards the apartment, a girl met us on the street and told us she was the apartment greeter. She said she had good news and bad news. The bad news was our apartment was completely flooded and was unlivable. The good news was they weren’t going to leave us on the street – they had an upgraded apartment we could have and it was not too far away.

I’ll get in to the details later but the bottom line is we walked about 1.5 kilometers to the other apartment. Every so often the girl would turn toward us and say we were very close (which was complete fiction) and that we were such good sports. Hey, 1.5 kilometers is not far UNLESS it is on crowded uneven cobblestone sidewalks in the rain with lightning and thunder all around AND you are pushing/pulling all your luggage (and we don’t travel lightly). What a nightmare! We were not such good sports by the time we got there.

We were wet, exhausted and not at all satisfied with the “upgraded” apartment. Their web site makes it look way better than it actually was. So much for all the planning we did to find our perfect apartment in Rome – but like I’ve said many times on our trips – what are you going to do? So we made the best of it and did not let it spoil our enjoyment of Rome. Even though we were not happy with the situation, if the flooding story was true I think we were lucky they found another place for us on such short notice. I keep telling myself it could have been worse – they could have left us on the street. Eventually I hope we will look back on it as a great adventure but that horrendous walk is still too fresh in our minds.

Having said all these things about what went wrong on this trip, we really had an amazing time and met fantastic people every place we went. If you’ve read any of my other trip reports you are probably cringing now because you know what will eventually follow are way too many gushy details of what made this such a great vacation for us.

"Gushy details" are what make reports like yours fun. I am looking forward to every paragraph. Bring it on!

Well, I am hooked! I look forward to every wonderful detail of your Italy trip! :-)

The pics of the Rome apartment don't look bad and the location is decent, but don't know where you originally planned. Perhaps not as convenient to the things you planned to do?

Ready to read more!! Thank you in advance for every bit of minutiae!

sounds as if you were very good sports about the apartment switch. the greeter was silly not to put you in a cab though - in that sort of circumstance, she really needed to make things as easy as possible. She was lucky that you didn't revolt!

looking forward to reading more about your adventures.

TPAYT, 2010 and paris1953 - thanks for the encouragement. Life has been crazy busy and it is tough to find the time but I really enjoy writing these things.

kybourbon - the pics do look good online but the apartment itself had some problems. It was really dirty which was a big problem for our group. And despite the bright online pictures it was very dark inside day and night. One of the bedrooms did not have a door - it was open to the living room. One of the bathrooms was TINY - especially the shower. The location was actually great but we did not know that when we arrived. We were just led around several streets in the pouring rain until we got there and really had very little idea of where we were. Once we had a chance to scout a little, the neighborhood was great.

annhig - we thought a cab would have been the thing to do too once we finally figured out it wasn't as close as she led us to believe. When we got to the other apartment, she turned us over to another greeter and left before we even saw the inside.

Airfare Craziness!

We had been checking airfares for nonstop Delta flights between ATL and FCO from the first day they became available for the dates we wanted to fly. The fare hovered most of time around the high $1800 mark (sometimes creeping as high as $2000 but never lower than about $1850) per ticket which we thought was too high. We would check just about every day but the fare never went down. One evening I was in an important meeting out of town when all of a sudden my cell phone started going crazy. My wife and both of my friends sent me texts and emails asking me to call them right away about our Italy tickets.

It took a while to get to a point in the meeting where I could leave so by the time I was able to call back, it was fairly late in the evening. It turns out that even though the fare had not changed when I checked it in the morning, when my friend checked it in the evening it had gone down $600 per ticket. We all agreed it would probably not get any better so we bought them that night. The fare went back up to about $1900 the next day and never came back down again (we continued to check it periodically).

I’m not sure if it was a computer error or some kind of 1 day special but we were sure glad to have that $2400 in our pocket and not on Delta’s P&L. It was prime flying season to Rome and both flights were completely full so Delta really had no reason to lower the fare. Airfare craziness!!

Don't you love checking the ticket prices afterwards to see the price never goes back down? I had the same experience with the exact same initial price range and same price drop one year. I'm still happy about it. Craziness!

Looking forward to the rest of your report.

Podere Lucignano Secondo – 7 days

Podere Lucignano Secondo (Day 1)

This trip started much the same as our 2012 trip. Our friends came to our house, we had some celebratory cava and took a limo to the airport. The difference was only one limo showed up this year and we had no worries about it breaking down before we made it to the airport – it was nice and so was the driver. Easy through security and again just like 2012, we went to One Flew South for wine and sandwiches (my duck sandwich was great). And just like the last trip, our One Flew South experience was a good omen for our trip. We had good food, good wine and a very fun server.

The plane boarded and left on time. Had a glass of wine and watched a movie using the personal on-demand feature Delta has at every seat. I keep saying I’m going to do this but before our next trip I’m really going to buy some good noise-cancelling headphones. Eventually had a typical airline dinner then several hours of ambien-aided sleep. There’s a lot of debate about how to best avoid jet lag and I believe people should do what they are comfortable with and what works for them. For me, 10 mg of ambien seems pretty tame compared to what all was going on in the seventies when I grew up! LOL! Had breakfast on the plane, landed on time and it was easy getting through customs. All our luggage showed up so we headed towards the car rental area.

It’s sort of a long trek to the Avis counter but we made it and were given a nice size Ford Mondeo wagon. It was slightly larger than the Mercedes wagon we had in 2012 and all our luggage fit nicely in the back. It was fairly powerful and the six speed manual transmission made it really fun to drive on the winding hilly Tuscan roads. Easy to get out of FCO and on to the highway. We stopped at an Autogrill for a coffee and were disappointed. We had stopped at this Autogrill in 2001 and really liked it but it was very run down now.

Since we originally bought our ticket, Delta kept changing our flight times to an earlier and earlier arrival time. We actually arrived at 7:30 AM and could not check in to our agriturismo until about 4 so we decided to stop in Orvieto for a few hours. My friend had bought a new garmin gps and it worked great everywhere in Tuscany. We plugged in the address of the parking lot Campo della Fiera and it took about an hour (not including our Autogrill stop) to drive there. We parked with our luggage in the boot and it worked great. We found a spot next to a concrete wall, backed in right up to it making it impossible to open the hatch and felt like it was very safe.

We spent several hours walking around the town, visiting the duomo and having a very nice lunch at Ristorante Antico Bucchero that we came across on one of the side streets. The owners are two young brothers who are a lot of fun plus their food was good. We took a ton of pictures and highly recommend a visit to this picturesque hill town even if it's only for a few hours.

We continued on to the very rural Podere (took about an hour and fifteen minutes - the gps directed us right to it) and were met by one of the owners. We immediately loved the place. After exploring the apartment and the grounds, we decided to go to a COOP near the train station in Siena for groceries. For some reason the gps (which by now we had named Daniella) could not find this COOP – it found others that were farther away. So I used dead reckoning to go towards where I thought the train station should be (thanks to that year and a half we had to do research, I had an idea of which way to go). Well I kept making turn after turn and getting more and more lost until I finally figured I better pull in somewhere and ask for directions. So I pulled in to a big parking lot to get our bearings and unbelievably it was the COOP parking lot. At first I did not see the sign and did not believe it but sure enough, my dead reckoning worked. The term “dead reckoning” became a joke whenever I decided to strike out for somewhere with no gps guidance.

The COOP was crazy busy – not sure why but it was a normal Thursday afternoon and it was wild. As usual we are pretty clueless in European grocery stores so it took as an hour to find just a few things. We plugged in the address to the Podere and made it home easily. We had some wine, cheese, grapes and crackers on the terrace- it was PERFECT and GORGEOUS. We could hear pheasants and doves in the distance and the temperature was perfect.

We had decided to have dinner at home the first night because we weren’t sure how we would do with jet lag. We cooked some pasta with asparagus and porcini – delicious. After dinner, we unpacked, caught up on my journal and went to bed very tired at about 11:30. An excellent first day at the Podere!

>>>when my friend checked it in the evening it had gone down $600 per ticket. <<<

What a bargain for tickets to Europe these days!

kwren - My usual luck is the other way around so I'm very happy it worked out in our favor this time. It takes a little bit of the sting out of paying the credit card bills when you get back. LOL!

kybourbon - we were happy with what we ended up paying. Of course less would be better and I'm really curious how it happened that the price was lowered for only a few hours.

I shouldn't complain no matter what - we had 5 (!) free tickets through United frequent flier miles and when it went decreased by $600 to $1250 even one ticket seemed like such a bargain.

The advantage of having 4 kids is that the miles pile up quickly!

Recently I've been flying from JFK through Dublin to Rome and have found prices under $900! Makes that $1250 seem like a rip-off!

I am amazed by your stamina to fly, pick up a rental car, drive, stop at Orvieto, make your way to the agriturismo, pick up groceries and prepare dinner all on your first day! I'm afraid that the rigors of travel are not as appealing as they once were for us. But the arrival at our destination marks the start of our trip and that is exciting!

Looking forward to Day 2 and more!

me too - and no bed before 11.30 pm - amazing especially after all that shopping. That would have finished me off!

looking forward to more.

When I take regular ambien (not the time release kind) on the plane, I get about 5 hours of good sleep. I wake up refreshed and ready to go - no grogginess or fog at all. I don't seem to have any side effects from it and it really makes the first day productive. Like I said it probably isn't for everyone but it works for me.

I'm ready for more, this sounds like a great trip already. We just got back from Rome and Positano, so I'm very curious about what you did and what you liked there. We loved it all :)

Tuscany is probably our next trip to Italy, so looking forward for details.

Sounds like a great trip. Looking forward to more of your report.

Jumping on board.. hope my trip report helped a little!

Enjoying your trip report, I'm in for the ride. :-)

Can't wait for more! Thanks for posting.

Enjoying this and looking forward to more!

Thanks to everyone for the nice words. Unfortunately this is going to be slow going for a while. Work is outrageously busy and we are leaving for our annual family beach trip next week. Nothing much productive gets done at the beach. LOL!!

But I am trying something new this time. Usually I upload a few hundred pics all in one folder and it is TIME CONSUMING on my relatively slow home connection. I'm going to try a day at a time in this report.

Here are some pics from day 1 (I hope).

https://john183italy2014.shutterfly.com/pictures/8

Yay! Gushy details!
Bring it.

First day pics are great, and I have to say, the ladies look fantastic, knowing all they'd been through in the last 24 hours.
Didn't someone said that 60 is the new 40? They must have been trying to sell a timeshare at the moment.

Podere Lucignano Secondo (Day 2)

Up at about 8:30 and met our neighbors (very nice couple from Rhode Island) who were staying in the other apartment for the first three days of our time there – then we had the whole place to ourselves. They had already been there a few days and gave us some restaurant and other recommendations which all turned out to be very good. Took a cup of coffee out to the terrace and it again was PERFECT and GORGEOUS. No pheasants or doves this morning but the temperature was perfect. We had a nice breakfast from the stuff we bought at the COOP yesterday and loitered for quite a while before heading towards Radda.

It was a very pretty drive to Radda. One thing you need to be aware of when driving in this part of Tuscany is the incredible number of bike riders – I mean bicycles - not motorcycles. I can’t imagine trying to peddle up these hills much less come down them at breakneck speeds but literally hundreds of people do it. When going around curves you really have to be careful. We spent a short time walking around Radda, we had a coffee and we saw a small wedding ceremony I think being performed by what we would call a JP. I was surprised to see an Italian wedding not in a church. By this time, it was starting to get hot.

We left for Panzano and had another pretty drive. We stopped on the side of the road and took some pics of Panzano in the distance. Of all the areas in Italy, I love the landscape near Panzano the best. We stopped at the place my wife and I stayed in 2001 – it was still gorgeous. Pulled over and took a pic of me standing beside the car in the exact some spot we did in 2001 and 2002. We then went to a little winery we had toured in 2001 – Panzanello. In 2001, Andrea and his wife were just getting started in the wine making business and he gave my wife and I an incredible tour of the vineyards. The vineyards belonged to his grandmother and he had to prove himself by making wine from grapes he bought from other growers before she would trust him with the family grapes. Well obviously he proved himself because he was now in charge and the place had really grown by 2014.

We went in to the office and started talking to the woman there and found out she was Andrea’s wife. I had sent an email several weeks ago with pictures from our 2001 trip saying we would like to visit them sometime during our trip and she recognized me from the photos in the email. She said Andrea was in town at lunch and she offered to give us a wine tasting and some snacks – which we took her up on. We bought a few bottles to take with us and had some shipped home. Andrea and his son Carlo came home then and he spent a long time with us touring his winery and storage areas.

At one point there were two oak barrels next to each other and he had us dip our fingers in each of them and try to taste the difference. I could taste a difference but did not know exactly why. It turns out the barrels were made of two different kinds of oak. He also showed us several cases with some special bottles he had made for his father. Tomorrow would be the fiftieth anniversary of when his grandmother bought Panzanello. They were preparing for a huge party and Andrea was doing all the cooking. He showed us some documents mentioning Panzanello that dated from the 1400s. He then took us through a long tunnel to his secret room where he keeps the good stuff. We eventually came up back in the tasting room and after lots of hugging we left for Panzano. What a fun time!

It was a weird time of the day for food and we debated about going on to Greve or stopping in Panzano for lunch and decided to try Panzano. We could only find one place open – the views were great, the food was not and it was HOT. Took a few pics as we walked around Panzano (we really like this tiny town) and left for Greve. Eventually found a good close parking spot and walked to the main piazza. We should have come here to eat because a LOT of restaurants were open. We had an enjoyable time walking around, shopping for gifts for our family, trying some wine from one of the dispensers where you buy a card, put it in the machine and can choose how much you want to try and we finished up our time in Greve cooling off with some gelato.

We then headed back to the little town of Pianella (the closest town to our Podere) for dinner at the local restaurant (this was one of the recommendations from the Rhode Island couple). On our way there we saw a deer in one of the fields. We saw more wildlife on this trip than any other trip we have taken to Italy. We had salads and pizza – both were very good. We ate at this little restaurant three times – it was just too close and too good. Finally back to the Podere and bed. An excellent second day at the Podere!

Some pics from day 2.

https://john183italy2014.shutterfly.com/pictures/41

flygirl - your trip report helped a lot. Thanks for finishing it.

hanabilly - I agree - the ladies do look fantastic!

xyz99 - are you going to do a trip report?

Loving your report and those amazing pictures! Such a beautiful area.

John,
I don't think I will...the places we visited are so much discussed on this board, we really did not do anything new or out of the ordinary. Plus, I have no talent to write it...my TR are always dry. You'd be bored to death.

I thought at some point about posting the pictures, I know I enjoy looking at everybody's pics, and they help me deciding what to do/see, but they are so many...and I do not have the time to select just a few and create a new album just for posting it here (as it was suggested to me in the past).

I try to answer questions though, hope that helps others planning. I am profoundly grateful to everyone who helped me plan our trip and answered my questions.

Love your pics, looking forward to days 3-17.

I'm loving your TR... my mother and I are considering a stay at Podere Lucignano Secondo in October. It's great to hear about the places you're visiting from there. I'd love to get the name of the restaurant in Pianella. Looking forward to hearing more!

Again, thanks to all for the nice words.

xyz99 - I know my reports bore people to death but I like to re-live the trip as I write it. Kinda like therapy for me. LOL!

rosecity15 - I thought I would give you a quick synopsis of our week at the Podere – it may be a while before I get to it in my day by day report. All the good reviews for the Podere on Tripadvisor are well deserved in our opinion. Nice place, nice owners and it truly was spotless. We saw either Max and Duccio or Enzo and Liliana on the property nearly every other day scrubbing the outside furniture and taking care of the plants/lawn.

Pianella is a tiny town with one restaurant, one convenience store, one gas station – you get the picture – it’s small – but perfect for what we wanted. The convenience store also has fresh-baked bread and pastry, good coffee/ espresso and several prepared foods in a deli-like counter. The restaurant is the first place you see with a big parking lot on the right as you go in to town from the Podere.

Lecchi is a lovely tiny unbelievably picturesque town that is close to the Podere. We had a great dinner at the restaurant and a great lunch at the bar in Lecchi. Everyone we talked to in the town (the bar owner, all of our servers and a couple of local residents who we unnecessarily asked where the restaurant was - it turns out the whole town is only about a block or two long so we would have easily found it on our own) could not have been nicer or friendlier.

Here is what we did:

Day 1 – stopped in Orvieto on way from FCO
Day 2 – Radda, Panzano, Panzanello, Greve
Day 3 – Rampini Ceramics, Castellina wine festival
Day 4 – Castelnuovo Berardenga,festival in Cortona to see a crossbow competition
Day 5 – Gaiole for lunch, Castello Meleto, drove around enjoying the gorgeous scenery
Day 6 – Montalcino, Sant Antimo, Pienza, Montepulciano
Day 7 – lunch at bar in Lecchi, Castello Ama, sunset tour and dinner at Castello Brolio

Lovely trip report and wonderful pictures! What a gorgeous region, and I love the Podere!

john,
I'm not at all bored...I'm actually waiting for more.

We took a day trip by train to Orvieto, you definitely had nicer weather than we did, but it was not bad. Just cloudy in the morning, then it cleared up. We took the underground tour, and it was interesting to compare that to the underground city we visited in Turkey last year. The cave "material" was different, and the ones in Cappadocia (Turkey) were bigger and deeper, but both populations used pigeon droppings as fertilizer. Interesting, right? The ones in Turkey are not lived in anymore, not by locals anyway, but lots of them are converted into wonderful cave hotels with all amenities. We stayed in one and absolutely loved it. The caves in Orvieto are still mostly private, belonging to the people who own the house above. They still use them as personal cellars.

I'm really curious about the crossbow competition, did you know about it before getting there? How? Or did you just find about it there and decided to see it?

Sounds like Podere is nicely situated for all this Tuscany driving, I'll keep that in mind.

john, loving your TR- but especially loving your pics. The colors are amazing!

Thank for sharing! Looking forward to more. I've pretty much decided that Greve is on my list for next trip! Your TR and other recent TR's have all convinced me I need to go. :)

John, we will be in Panzano next month so I'm loving your report. Did you know about the festivals before your arrival?. Also i'm also interested in the sunset tour of Brolio. Did you pre-book that? Could you tell me more about it?

Amazing how many flooded apartments there are in Rome.

Looking forward to day 3 with a visit to Ceramichi Rampini. We
have a set of their dishes.

Wow - our first full beach day is great. How can just sitting at the beach and at the pool be so exhausting - I'm sure it has nothing to do with the several Coronas that were consumed. LOL!

progol - Thanks, we love the area too.

wyz99 - we knew about the competition by googling for June festivals in Tuscany. We came across this in one of our searches: http://www.giostraarchidado.com/en/the-programm.aspx

We went to the Archidado joust on Sunday June 8th. I'll eventually get to the details in this report but we had a lot of fun in Cortona and the competition was great to watch.

sarge56 - we think Greve is an enjoyable town to visit for a few hours. But then we love the whole Chianti Classico area a lot.

Pawleys - we knew about several festivals by just googling festivals in Tuscany. We booked the sunset tour a couple days before we went. We were sort of skeptical before we went because it is not expensive and it included a four course dinner that included wine. We thought how good could it be for that little money? Well, we enjoyed it a lot. The tour was good and the food and wine were surprisingly good. It turned out there was no limit on the wine - when we finished a bottle - they kept bringing more. We were with another couple from California who are in the wine industry there. They were as skeptical as we were beforehand but they really enjoyed it too. Our expectations were fairly low but we thought it was well worth it.

bvlenci - Yep, we love apartments in Paris but from now on it is going to be only hotels in Rome.

HappyTrvl - I'm hoping the pieces we had shipped arrive soon. What an interesting place and owner. I hope to get the details from day 3 finished soon.

John,
Don't write off the apartments in Rome - we stayed here and loved it.
http://www.sleepinitaly.com/rome/nav...rtment-minerva

It was not perfect, but got very close. We would stay there again.