Day 3 - "Tour" of Tuscany

Today was the day that we got all of the "incidents" of the trip out of the way. We started out with a planned tour of Tuscany with our tour guide Sergio. When he got here, turns out he had clipped a back-hoe plow attachment and shattered the back window of the van. So we followed him in the cars as he led us around Tuscany. When we returned, we had a mishap with a mobile street vendor who accidentally dropped one of his truck's side panels on the windshield of one of the cars as it drove by, shattering it in one corner. While everyone was working out the details, Chari lost one of her contacts. So there we were, all of us, looking for her contact, including the street vendor and another person in the village.

With all of that said, we had a great time going throughout parts of Tuscany. Our first stop was in Radda in Chianti, a wonderful little village with a playground, park, and some other shops, including an internet café (woohoo!!) which provided the ability for this update. We're going to go back to that place again, since it's only 10 minutes away. From there we when to lunch in Greve in Chianti, then stopped by a pottery place where we got a chance to see how they hand-painted the pottery. Learned artists who made painting pottery look so easy. Beautiful. Our tour ended with another drive over to Montevarchi to buy train tickets for our outing to Florence and a stock-up trip to the equivalent of a Super Walmart (complete with a home-made ice cream store.) Even though this was not really the tour we had hoped for, it was still a great way for us to get to know the area for the rest of the trip.

FYI: The Chianti region is just that: regional, not political. It's all very interesting. Check out the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chianti