Taking Our Time in Tuscany

The heart of the Chianti region.

We have seen a lot of wonderful European cities on this leg of the Funemployment Tour, ranging from London to St. Petersburg and Stockholm to Athens.

Each one has an energy and a beauty unique to itself. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of things to do and sites to visit in each one.

Each one is exciting. And each one is exhausting.

So when we pulled into Tavarnelle Val di Pesa in the Tuscany region of Italy, we were delighted by the lack of size and the lack of bustle.

It was exactly what we needed.

This isn’t to say that the town lacked things to do. It mostly lacked the seas of tourists that we had been wading our way through for the previous few weeks.

We arrived on a Tuesday for no other reason than it fit our schedule. Luckily for us, that was the evening each week that the town square turns into a lively marketplace.

Almost every town in Tuscany
looked like this in some way.

Bars and restaurants opened to the square, moving tables and chairs outside.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, there was a restaurant grilling steaks on the courtyard outside, and it smelled amazing.

The waiter escorted me next door to the butcher shop, where I received a two-inch steak cut in front of me. I took it back to the man at the grill, where he seasoned it with only olive oil and sea salt before throwing it over the coals.

It tasted as amazing as it smelled. With all due respect to the steaks in places like Kansas and Argentina (I have had outstanding steaks in both places), this was the best I’ve ever tasted.

We were surrounded at the restaurant – and around the town all together – by locals and people who had driven in from neighboring towns.

It was lively but also intimate and welcoming.

For five days, we started our mornings off with a run and a trip down to the town’s coffee shop/bar for some breakfast and caffeine, and then we headed out each day on excursions.

There were medieval towns and vineyards everywhere, and each one had its own uniqueness that made it different and interesting.

Sunset from near where we stayed in Tavarnelle.

Most of the towns were swarming with tourists, and that was fine.

Because at the end of each day we returned to our little hamlet in Tavarnelle, where we dined on fresh pasta and opened the wonderful bottles of wine that had discovered that day.

Overall, it was peaceful and fairly perfect.

It was just what we needed out of Tuscany.