Fiesole

While I was in Firenze I wanted to get out into the Tuscan countryside and see some sights. Without a car my options for getting out of the city were limited. My friend Matt recommended that I rent a Vespa and go cruise around for the day. It sounded like a good idea. I bought a map of the Chianti region figuring I could see some vineyards and then maybe go to San Gimignano or Siena. On Saturday afternoon I went to the place that rents scooters and found out all of the details. On Sunday morning I returned to discover they were out of scooters. The lady wouldn’t rent me one of the bigger scooters they had because I had never ridden one before. She recommended another place up the street. I went to that place and they refused to rent me a scooter because I had never ridden one before. I was pretty mad and I thought I had just wasted the day.

On another recommendation by Matt I caught a bus from the middle of town up to the nearby hill town of Fiesole (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiesole,_Italy) which was the best I could manage to get out of the city and salvage the day. It was a nice little town with great views of the surrounding countryside and the city of Florence. I wandered around a bit, ate some excellent focaccia bread and began heading back down the hill. There were some very nice houses, or villas I suppose, on the road between Fiesole and Firenze.

Views of Firenze below:


Some of the nice villas:


After walking maybe a mile down the hill I stopped at a restaurant to have a late lunch. It turned out to be a pretty nice restaurant and I had one of the better meals of my trip. After lunch I went back outside to catch the bus the rest of the way back to town. After waiting about 10 minutes it started to rain and it looked like it was going to get worse. The bus showed up and I got on just as the skies opened up. For the next 15 minutes it rained possibly harder than I have ever seen it rain in my life. There was a little bit of hail and a little bit of lightning, but mostly just big fat rain drops coming down. It ended up raining off and on the rest of the afternoon. I think it may have been a blessing in disguise for me to have been unable to rent the vespa that day. I like how things always seem to work out for me.