I highly recommend getting lost in Italy.

It’s not that difficult to do; rent a car, pick a destination some distance from where you are and start driving. Chances are you’ll end up not quite where you intended. And chances are, it will be a wonderful experience.

That’s what happened to us, not once, or twice, but three days in a row. After a leisurely morning at Antico Uliveto we all piled into the van and headed off toward an important tourist destination. Somewhere along the way the road we were looking for never materialized, South became North and we found ourselves on a different part of the map than anticipated. Boy, were we lucky.

The first day we ended up in Monterigioni, an 800 year old walled village built to protect Siena from Florence (which today would be akin to Ames being built to protect Des Moines from Minneapolis). In addition to a small church and a few shops, the highlight of the village is the wall. For a few Euro you can climb a modern platform that hugs the inside of the wall, dropping imaginary boiling oil on Florentine invaders or just gazing out on the rolling green hills. They also have a pretty decent gelato shop!

Day two started with grand plans of a sweep through Southern Tuscany, but ended up in the quiet contemplation of The Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggoiore, a Benedictine abbey founded in 1313. We needed the quiet after the breathtaking, and not a little hair-raising trip to get there. Narrow winding roads cling to the hilltops, offering the most spectacular scenery we saw in Tuscany and the feeling of being on a 30 mile long monster roller coaster, with the added thrill of two-way traffic and eighteen wheelers.

By the third day we were quite happy to let the car take us wherever it wanted. This included an Etruscan burial mound (pre-dates the Romans) and the city of San Gimignano. With 13 “skyscapers” built in the 12th and 13th centuries, the city can be seen for miles. Once a stop along the pilgrim route from Northern Europe to Rome, it is now a stop on the tourist route through Tuscany. But despite the myriad of gift shops and pre-fixe tourist menus, the architecture and ambiance make it well worth seeing. And if you can convince your mother to let you climb the steps of the tallest tower and actually go near enough the railing at the top to see, you’ll be rewarded with a vista that stretches for miles in every direction.

I could probably keep writing about Italy for weeks — so much did we see and experience during our stay there — but I promise this will be my last entry on that happy country for the time being. Next week I’ll return to the Northern Europe and our adventures in Amsterdam.

Tuscany Photos