Monday, January 17, 2011

Some comments from Friends of Annie and Andrew

Hello Rod – some tips re: places to visit from friends who’ve been to Tuscany:

·         Arezzo - We loved Arezzo and visited it at least 3 times. The restaurants under the colonnades are great for lunch. We went to the Antiques Fair that is held there each month (I can't remember if it is the 1st or last weekend of the month).   Even Mike was impressed and he hates shopping! The big thing there are the Piero frescos. Take look at http://projects.ias.edu/pierotruecross/piero.htm

·         Saturnia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnia the springs/waterfalls are on the right hand side of the page and were free when we went (hopefully still are) and absolutely fantastic. Saturnia is approx 2.5 hrs drive south of Arezzo

·         Sorano – fantastic hilltop town, paid 80 euro cents for coffee with a view off the cliff edge to the tombs in the rock face below.  An old fortress provides some amazing views.

·         Sovano – great old church. Somewhere down here there was a great Etruscan necropolis which we visited

·         Montelcino – less crowded that Montepuliciano, but both great.

·         Sienna and its Duomo – fantastic!

How we love Paris in the springtime


Bruce and Therese have taken another step down the road to joining us at the villa. Here's Bruce's update:

Hi to all our villa-friends!

We've booked our airfares and now we've got our little Paris love nest. Just click this link:
www.myparisvisit.com/rental-studio-apartment-palais-royal-paris-25.html - its tiny but its all we need especially with its closeness to the Jardin de Tuileries (my green fingers are twitching!), Place de la Concorde (the start of the home straight in le Tour), the Seine (for a run), the Louvre etc etc

Resey spent hours scouring the many sites before she came upon this highly recommended site where, unlike others, there was no excessive fees and little fuss - I was able to use my PayPal account to easily transfer the euros. So, here we are wistfully anticipating celebrating our first wedding anniversary in the 'city of love'. Oh, and it bisects Rue Therese (of course!!).

Getting to Granada and Cordoba in Spain is next … stay tuned!