Today we left Florence for Chianti.  To get to our winery/ bed and breakfast we needed to rent a car.  Since driving in downtown Florence is restricted, we had to take the T1 tram to the Hertz rent-a-car.  The T1 tram is the Brown line of Italy, slow and seems to have too many unnecessary turns.  On top of that, it was kind of hard to get tickets.  We spent ten minutes just looking for a place to buy them- and eventually bought them at a newspaper stand.

The drive to Poggerino B&B, near Radda in Chianti took about an hour.  We took the scenic route, which had some great views.  We actually climbed to near the top of the mountain (both in Palzzano and near the B&B).  After today, I feel like I have seen many different parts of Italy; Rome, a big city, Florence, a more moderate sized city, and the Tuscan countryside, with small towns and rural areas.

Overall, today was a more relaxing day.  Abby was a bit stressed driving in Florence, but after that it was relaxing.  People often forget to relax on trips.  They often forget that a vacation …well… is a vacation.  I find that Americans see vacations as being in two groups

1.  Vacations to relax, to places like beaches, or even to stay home

2.  Vacations to travel, see places, and do things, often with ambitious itinerary

When a vacation belongs to category two, people can sometimes return more worn out then when they left.  We have a lot to see on this trip, and had done a lot the last few days.  So, today it was time to relax a bit, enjoy the weather, the sun, and the view (which is really nice).

The only thing we did do was go into town (Radda) for lunch.  We also went out for dinner.  Lunch was unexpectedly the best meal I’d had so far.  It was this flat pasta with salami ragu.  A good portion too.  American portion sizes have become ridiculous, and not only at the Cheesecake Factory.  Some places in the city have scaled back to more reasonable sizes.  Buona Terra, our favorite Italian place is not too bad.  But, still you’re far more likely to get way too much food than not enough.