Picking Up Padillas in Firenze

We woke up to rain this morning. It's still warm out, and the rain does not bother us. We hope it gets it out of it's system before everyone else gets here. I think Tony and Tree are in for a bit of rain, but the weather is supposed to turn to summer in a couple days. Had the best pastries of the trip for breakfast....I didn't want to stop eating them, but I finally tore myself away. We packed up and then caught a bus to the train station. Stood in a long line to get our Eurail Passes validated for the rest of our trip. Then we found out that all the trains to Florence were full until later in the afternoon. Since the Padillas were scheduled to land in Florence around noon, we had to take a regional train to Prato and then take another regional from Prato to Florence. Not to worry, we have fresh bread, gorgonzola and salame di Prosciutto. Too early for vino...even for me! We should arrive in Florence around noon. We then got a text from the Padillas that they missed their connection in Paris so they wouldn't land in Florence until 3pm, so we had plenty of time.

We arrived in Firenze and headed straight to the Mercato. We decided to sit and cool off (yes, the sun was finally shining) and rest a bit before we picked up a picnic to greet Tony and Tree. The shop owners kept trying to sell us wine to go with our food and we had to decline since we were driving....so sad! Since we had some extra time now, I did some preview shopping in the market for when we come back in a week. Everything is pretty much the same, except all the stalls appear to be run by non-Italians. I think I shall enjoy the leather market by the hotel we like better! We caught a taxi to the airport just as it started to rain a bit. We did all the paperwork for our car while we waited for them to land. We greeted some less than overjoyed Padillas as they were without any of their luggage!

Since they lost their luggage, they had no booster for Tony, so we stopped at a super store near the airport to see if they could buy one. No luck, so we strapped him into the middle back seat and drove to Castlemuzio anyway. The drive was uneventful, but beautiful! Our little hilltown is adorable and the owner, Issabella is a gem. She made us feel so welcome and immediately took the responsibility to find the lost luggage. She gave us a bottle of the house wine from their working farm and we all relaxed. Our apartment is perfect!

We ate dinner at the only restaurant in town and it was fantastic! The waitress brought us a variety of her favorite antipasti, which included crostini with an eggplant and mushroom sauté, another with tuna and a fantastic soft cheese dish wrapped in zucchini with an artichoke and truffle oil sauce (out of this world good!). Dinner consisted of tagliatelle with a delicious wild boar Bolognese sauce. It was so good, we ordered more! We also had two rare beef steak dishes that were a nice change, tender and flavorful. Dessert was a fabulous mix of crostada, semifreddo and biscotti with Vin Santo. We left the restaurant fat and happy. We were successful in keeping the Padillas awake to help them adjust for the jet lag. Tony was exhausted, but then flew out of bed when he heard that we found Limoncello in the fridge!

We retired for the night knowing that we'd have to wake them up way too early, 9:15am for our orientation to the agritourismo, the region and the working farm.