Tuscany

We found a steal of a deal for an agritourism stay about an hour outside Florence. It was time for us to get the kids out of the city, so we took the train to Florence, then rented a car and drove out to Castelfiorontino.I typically deal with a certain amount of pessimism on travel days. The kids are really good travelers, truly, but there’s a lot of being on time and schlepping bags and getting resettled. I started to wonder if the place we had booked could be as nice as it looked. Maybe we would be bored. Maybe we would be in the only ugly part of Tuscany. Maybe I hadn’t planned well enough. (That’s a frequent concern of mine, since I cannot reasonably keep up with the research I might normally do for a shorter trip.)As we navigated our way out of Florence, my fears began to subside. The rolling hills, dappled sunlight, cypress allees–it was lovely. Eve kept asking me about our house, though: would we have a yard? Would we be in the country?We drove up a gravel drive to a gate festooned with climbing roses. Our hosts greeted us warmly, and without much English at all–we navigated with our limited knowledge of one another’s languages, hand motions, and Google Translate.What needed no translation, however, was that the ladies were warm and hospitable. They had a fire cracking on the wood stove to drive away the chill of the day. Cinzia and Katia left us a couple bottles of their homemade wine, as well as a bottle of olive oil from their orchard. We were in good hands.Castelfiorontino was for us a place of true rest. Outside, the kids played bocce and ping pong, and inside we curled up next to the fire. We did a little school and studied Renaissance art. I took some nice long walks and cleared my head. Vance was wiped out for the first couple of days, which was challenging emotionally. It’s just hard to feel bad, as obvious as that sounds.I didn’t have much of a kitchen in Rome, but our situation in Tuscany was much more friendly. I had fun buying all kinds of cheeses that I had never heard of. We had bruschetta and frittatas, fresh pasta with pesto, chicken cacciatore, Tuscan melon and of course a lot of Nutella. I love to cook, but my real life at home is busy, and I’m often falling back on basics for meals. Getting to experiment in the kitchen was rejuvenating.We had planned to take a day trip to Florence in the middle of the week. Because of the crowds and Vance’s health, we had pre-purchased our tickets to the Uffizi. Wednesday came, though, and Vance wasn’t well. We had hard decisions to make–should I try to drive the (manual) car down to the train station and take the kids by myself? Should we forfeit our tickets and hope for a better day for our family? It feels frustrating to be close and yet out of reach.Ultimately, we decided to wait for a better day, and it was freeing to remember that one of our true priorities has been rest for Vance. It brought clarity for me in a day that had started out feeling very frustrating and disappointing. It was good to remind my Type A-see-all-the-things personality that we could just enjoy what we had right where we were. And there was so much to delight in.Vance improved over the week, and we for make our day trip to Florence later on the week. But my memories of Tuscany will be mostly of the rest we fought for and found and enjoyed.