Al and Dee's Travel Blog

Close

Here are our various ramblings on the recent visit to Chianti in Tuscany.

The basic itinery was to fly into Florence late on the Thursday night, spend the day exploring the city before picking up the hire car and heading out into the country side to a villa in the Chianti region.

The taxi ride to the hotel in Florence should probably have given me some warning that the driving in Italy is something that only Italians could truly understand – our taxi driver spent most of the trip talking to us over his shoulder with the steering wheel expertly wedged between his knees.

“Looks easy, I’ll have to try that”  I think to myself..

The morning was spent walking around Florence admiring the Duemo and the street market, followed by a climb along some of the hilliest roads to the Piazzale Michelangelo which was highly recommended by our taxi driver.

Time to head to the Avis office to pick up our “Compact” hire car and head for the hills.. of course Avis decide to upgrade me to “The Beast”, a VW Passat the size of a small ocean liner – I’m going to need a drink after this..

The villa at Fattoria Pratale was definately what the doctor ordered – great view of the vineyards and a braai nearby, can’t really ask for more.

The Firefly Hypothesis

These things only seem to happen when we’re well into the second bottle of Chianti..  The first thing to explain is that I’ve never seen fireflys before, and the site of the blinking little beggars on the vines below the braai area got me pretty darn excited..

Excited enough in fact that with the urging of  Dee and the rather fine Chianti in my bloodstream I relented and went down the little hill to the vines and sat with Dee in the Tuscan dirt (I’m more of a chair by the fire kind of guy).

Needless to say it was awesome, leading me to expound the the Firefly Hypothesis: 

“To see the fireflys of life, sometimes you need to get your ass dirty”.

Yeah.. that’s probably the Chianti speaking again.

Dee immediately leaps on my Hypothesis and somehow it becomes her Firefly Philosophy – “A guide to live life by.”

I can’t really decide if we’re ineffably brilliant or blind drunk.

Saturday was spent walking around the quaint town of Greve in Chianti, followed by a walk to Montefioralle voted “the most beautiful village in Italy”.

The stone and terracotta buildings perched on top of a very steep hill were indeed stupidly beautiful, almost surreal.

Montecalvi and the “Firefly Hypothesis”

Wine o’clock can sneak up on one quite quickly in Tuscany apparently, and it begins to dawn on us that we’ve not replenished the supply we torpedoed the previous night.

I fire up the TomTom and search for the nearest wine estate and we’re off !

..and up a very narrow and rutted dirt road to what appears to be somebody’s house – bloody GPS again.

We decided to park up and at least attempt to establish some line of communication with  local watching us pull into what is quite likely his private driveway – Firefly Hypothesis and all that.

Turned out that the local is actually from California and no, they don’t usually do tasting, but yes his friend guy that owns the place may open up for us, and come on in.

We’re starting to feel a little like we’re intruding on someone’s lunch as the owner comes out pulling on a shirt, but we’re soon put at ease with the American owner as he opens up the cellar and feeds us a great Chianti Classico and an unlabelled Cabernet Sauvignon “Super Tuscan”.

The mention that we’re South African seems to break the ice and we leave after an hours worth of chatting with our one bottle of wine, somehow feeling that although the owner almost certainly made a financial loss out of our arrival it was still worth it.

I guess when you have views like these it just kinda makes you chilled. We decide that so far the score is Firefly Hypothesis 1, Life 0

Our stay on the beautiful island of Meeru

Close

The white sandy beaches and crystal clear waters certainly blew us away from day one.

Arriving at the airpot at the capital Mali is an eye opener – the whole airport is an island so you’re really grateful for the excellent brakes on the aircraft.