In 2019, our family took an amazing trip to Italy. Since our parents were in their late 70’s, we felt an urgency to go and fulfill our mother’s life-long dream to go on an Italian vacation, so we made it happen. When COVID hit just a few months later, we were so glad we went before 2020!
Our mother is a romantic who loved to watch movies about the Tuscan countryside. It planted in her heart a desire to go to Italy and experience Tuscany for herself. She also loves Italian food. She is known for making homemade spaghetti sauce and many delicious pasta dishes.
Vineyard at Tuscan Villa.
So, amid the tours of Rome, Florence and Venice, we rented a van and surprised our mother with a lovely drive through Tuscany complete with a one night stay at a lovely Tuscan Villa. We started in Certaldo, a quaint mountaintop Tuscan village with history dating back to the 1300’s. It was an amazing little town with breathtaking vistas and lovely old buildings to enjoy.
View from Certaldo outer wall toward Tuscan countryside.
Every street was paved with cobblestone and tightly woven into a mountain top fortress of a town. It was full of nooks and crannies to explore on foot only, no cars allowed. We loved every step, every gate, every wrought iron flourish, every flowered window sill and of course the magnificent stone steps.
A Certaldo Street Cafe and boutique.
For lunch, we stopped at an outdoor courtyard café for delicious Italian food. The courtyard was lovely with light yellow tablecloths highlighting the surrounding terra cotta stone walls. The heavy overhead trees had nets to catch falling branches and nuts to keep our dining experience more comfortable. Everywhere we went, the only food we could find was Italian. Of course, in Certaldo it seemed more delicious than anywhere else knowing all the work it took to transport fresh food to this hilltop town. By the way, the caprese was delicious!
Next, we went on to our much anticipated surprise overnight villa retreat. It was a lovely stone building with arches and steep stairs. The villa was surrounded by amazing rolling hills covered with the greenest grape vines you have ever seen.
Our Villa in Tuscany, the “Vallorsi”
Every view, in every direction, was a beautiful Tuscan landscape painting just waiting to happen. The perfectly aligned view with cypress trees and a vineyard out of our quaintly shuttered bathroom window seemed like a rustic old painting. There was a lovely swimming pool that was so refreshing after a day of sight-seeing and all around us beautiful grounds to explore at our leisure. It was a picture-perfect villa and amazing surprise for our mother who cried with excitement and joy at such a lovely place. We loved every minute of sharing such an amazing place with her.
Views from our Tuscan villa bathroom and surrounding vineyard.
Now the art! Oh the art all around Italy. It is literally everywhere you go! Especially in Rome. Sculptures are seriously on every single street. We went to the Vatican Museum in Vatican City, as well as the Sistine Chapel, in Venice we visited San Marco’s Basilica and Doge’s Palace and in Florence we visited the Duomo and the Uffizi Museums, but of course in Florence we did not miss Michelangelo’s Accademia Museum, where stands the famous David statue.
The Vatican Museum in Vatican City and Uffizi Art Museum in Florence.
Michelangelo’s Museum is worth talking about. It is not a huge building, but it is jam packed with tons of sculptures and even some paintings, but it is really a collection of his carved marvel sculptures. There is an excellent lead up to the David statue with a hallway adorned with many of Michelangelo’s last sculptures, some of them unfinished. It truly shows the process and testifies of what a challenging art form sculpting can be. It is such amazing history and instills a sense of wonder and awe that rough blocks of stone can be shaped into such smooth and beautiful human forms. It prepares you to enter the large rotunda where the amazing 17-foot David stands all by itself.
The David
What a gorgeous piece of history and beautiful work of craftsmanship. There was also another hallway leading to a medium size room full of plaster replicas of famous sculptures lined up on shelves and free standing all throughout the room. There are rows and rows of rows of amazing human busts.
The whole place is so cool and almost overwhelming with so many sculptures. The Michelangelo Academia Museum is a beautiful homage to the great artist Michelangelo. Ahh Italia! What treasures to behold.