The hyper-efficiency of the Italians....Who knew?

Our bags arrived safely the same night we did. Unfortunately, instead of being delivered to the hotel that was about 2km from the airport, they were delivered to our villa in Tuscany. Oops. At least they turned up and it was a relief to get into clean clothes four days after we left San Francisco!

Pisa was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be. I was expecting a tourist trap (it was) with a goofy, slightly tipped over tower. It was indeed that, but it was a beautiful place and a great way to start the holiday. In the end, we did take a couple of requisite tower holding pictures and a couple other pictures of us holding up other buildings in the area. We amuse ourselves endlessly. We did a little shopping for essentials like toothpaste and deoderant and some other odds and ends and then we pretty much sat around and ate. It was lovely.

We arrived at our villa near Greve in Chianti on Saturday afternoon, rejoiced at seeing our luggage, and then headed out to explore the area. We rented an Alph Romero and Jer is having a blast driving around the narrow roads and tight turns of the Tuscan countryside. Jer wants it made very clear that this is an AR 147 turbo diesel, for those that care (Scott).

We had intended to tour around some of the wineries in the area, but have found a shop in central Greve that has over 1200 different wines and has a huge tasting set-up. The tastings are dispensed from a big robot that holds about twenty bottles of wine. You buy a smart card and then stick it in the robo-sommolier and press the button that corresponds with the wine you want to try. There is a place like this in San Francisco, but we haven't been there yet. Now that we know about the radness of wine-dispensing robots, we will have to make a trip! We probably should make it out to the countryside, but having your choice of several hundred wines at once is tough to give up.

Today we are in Sienna, which is full of lovely old buildings, churches and about a thousand annoying tourists. We, of course, are the good ones! :D This is a beautiful city with lots of narrow, steep, and windy streets and we have been losing ourselves in the back alleys. We are only here for the day, so we want to see as much of it as possible and soak up the culture.

We will add pictures as soon as we can. We forgot the camera cable today. Oops.