Author Archives: Tiim & Kathy

The day begins with a lovely spread of breakfast at our hotel, The Crown Plaza. After meeting with our trip experience leader, Mahmoud, we head out for our tour of the city. Most of the buildings are made of limestone, making for a very white city landscape.

We spent the morning at Amman’s Citadel Archaeological Site which is a blend of Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic ruins.

After exploring the Citadel we walked around the older part of the city including walking through the old vegetable market.

Since Jordan is a Muslim country there are mosques.

We finished our walk with lunch at a Chicken Shawarma place.

We are leaving Friday for our new adventure to Jordan and Egypt with Overseas Adventure Travel. Ever since we went to Israel in 2009, I have wanted to go to Jordan and see Petra. Tim promised that we would return and he is making good on that promise and what a treat to see all the wonderful sites in Egypt, also.

We have 22 hours of air travel ahead of us. We land in Amman, Jordan on September 2. We have three nights in Amman and then to Petra for two nights. We’ll be back with photos and adventures in a few days.

Today we all took a drive south to the Umbrian city of Orvieto. It is a hill town with its own personality. We began with a fun funicular ride to the top of the hill.

Orvieto is dominated by its beautiful Duomo with a facade of mosaics and sculptures telling stories from the Bible.

Orvieto is a lovely town to just wander around and delight in the views and the cute walkways and of course discover more churches!

We begin our drive on a foggy morning to discover the valley around the Orcia River. It is called Val d’Orcia. We come upon a castle from the 1300’s called Castelluccio.

The first city we come to is Bagno Vignoni. This city has natural thermal water and the main piazza has a large pool. There were many hikers and bikers here as it is on a major hiking route.

Our next stop is Castiglione d’Orcia, a lovely little town way up on a hill.

We drive on to San Quirico d’Orcia. This is another lovely medieval city with ancient city walls.

We leave San Quirico and somehow take a wrong turn and end up in Buonconvento.

We enjoyed touring these lovely ancient medieval hill towns. Each unique in their own way.

#Vald’Orcia, #SanQuiricod’Orcia, #Castiglioned’Orcia, #Bagnivignoni,

We began our day trip to Florence with a one and a half hour drive from our Agriturismo to a parking lot in Scandicci where there is a huge parking lot. We then took the tram to the heart of Florence. Thank you to Rick Steves Guide Book for this excellent advice.

Our first sight is the amazing Duomo.

We walked on to See Orsanmichele Church to look at the sculptures on the exterior. The first one is of four Christian sculptures martyred by Emperor Diocletian.

Next to Piazza della Signoria, the main city square.

We walked across the bridge to the Oltrarno, the other side of the Arno River and found a nice place to eat lunch in the Piazza di Santo Spirito.

We spent the rest of our time wandering and shopping in a few markets. We ended up at the Santa Croce Church.

The church is full of art and monuments to important people like Galileo and Michelangelo.

This was a quick overview of Florence for us all.

We start at our Agriturismo with our sites on hiking to the hill town of Montepulciano. 2.25 kilometers.

We follow the signs for trekkers along roads and paths mainly going up.

We pick up some panini to bring home for lunch and then head back to our Tuscan home.

#LaBruciata, #agriturismo, #tuscany, #montepulciano

The family here at La Bruciata invited us to help pick their grapes on Saturday morning. What fun we had!

The family uses this wine for their own consumption and to serve to their guests.

We drive an hour northeast to visit Cortona. Parking in these hill towns is always a challenge! We pass by Cortona and parking and decide to go a few more kilometers to a hermitage originally started by Saint Francis in 1211. It is a much larger place than we imagined, but they have preserved the original cell of St. Francis.

We visit the beautiful Santa Margarita Church.

We head into the historic center and finally find a place to park. The town is medieval charming and we grab a quick pizza and sit on the piazza enjoying the people.

On the way home we stop at Leuta Winery, recommended to us by Tim’s sister, Bekki. We just happen to find the owner, Denis, available for a wine tasting.

What a fun evening participating in a Tuscan cooking class! I’ll just post some photos and captions.

Arezzo is a city where much of the city was damaged during World War II. We walked the steep streets to the historic center and thankfully much of it was preserved. We visited three main piazzas.

The church of San Francesco contains frescos by Piero della Francesca that tell the Legend of the True Cross.

Judy and I hiked up to Piazza del Duomo. The building of the cathedral began in 1278.

Our next piazza is Piazza Grande. We found out that the movie La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful) was filmed in Arezzo, with a scene here in this piazza.

We took a drive to a tiny town, Oliveto. We thought there was a museum there as it was used as a concentration camp for Italian Jews during WWII. We couldn’t find a museum, but we were greeted by a woman from her window with a cheery, Buona Sera! The town seemed very sparsely populated.

Oliveto home.