Tuscany in the Fall

Last week, during one of the children's school breaks, our family spent three nights in Tuscany!  It was the first trip to Italy for all of us, so we were looking forward to experiencing a new country and culture together.  I have decided to break this trip up into three posts, one for each day.  That is less intimidating for me to tackle and maybe a little less time consuming for our friends and family to read! 

For those who are geographically challenged, like myself, I included a map below showing the region of Italy that we explored.  Tuscany is shaded dark in the picture of Italy below and the map on the right is zoomed in.  We visited Pisa, on the west coast, Siena and San Gimignano, in the center of the map below, and Florence, shown in Italian as Firenze. 

We arrived in Pisa, Italy around noon on Wednesday, picked up the rental car and headed straight for the "Leaning Tower"!  When we arrived, it was pretty cloudy and actually rained on and off for about an hour.  However, after we stopped for lunch at this cute pizzeria...

...the clouds broke a bit and there was even visable sun (which we had not seen for at least a week in Brussels!).    Jason was able to snap some pictures and the kids enjoyed taking some funny pictures as well.

Here the tower is pictured with the cathedral that is just a few meters away.  Apparently, in Italy is was customary to build a cathedral, a baptistry, and a tower together when establishing a church. 

This is a view of the inside of the Pisa Cathedral.  It had beautiful paintings throughout, and it also provided a nice shelter to wait out a small rain shower!

Jason, Jenna and Ethan with blue sky in the picture!

Ethan doing his normal bulldozing!

And Jenna hanging out in Pisa.

Our intitial approach to the Leaning Tower seemed a bit surreal.  On trips like this it sinks in, once again, the amazing opportunity God saw fit to provide our family through Jason's work to explore this part of the world with our family! 

Around 4:00 p.m., we packed the kids in our rental car and headed two hours south to Siena.  We were booked to stay in a castle and we were all anxious to arrive!  Honestly, the trip to Siena was less than impressive.  There were a lot of industrial buildings all along the highway.  Combined with the fact that it was dark by 5:15, I was beginning to wonder why everyone raves so much about this sliver of Italy. 

We arrived to the Castle by 6:45.  Despite no lighting on the building and a few minutes of discussion as to where we should enter to check-in, we were eventually greeted with a warm reception by one of the proprietors.  We entered through a large wooden door into a brick courtyard type area - it really looked like a castle! 

The kids were thrilled and the apartment we rented was perfect for our family,  much more spacious than we exptected, with a table for eating at and also a small kitchen!  It seemed like the perfect base for exploring for a couple of days.  We quickly received a restaurant recommendation and headed out for more pizza and pasta! 

After eating dinner at what turned out to be a little nicer of an establishment than we expected (almost all the other people were in suits, and definitely no other pre-schoolers running around), we settled in for an early bedtime and much needed rest.  I was instantly aware of how much Italians love children and accept them in restaurants and other places that the Belgians and people of the Netherlands seem annoyed at them. However, after the rather un-scenic trip to the castle, I wasn't expecting too much for our second day of exploring.  That is why the single most memorable moment for me in Italy, was when I opened the blinds on the window in our room that following morning.  More on that in the next post...for now, I will close with what turned out to be our only family photo of the trip!