Saturday Well here we are in Bucine after our first uneventful transfer, if you put aside the drama of buying the bus tickets and the fact that it was raining when we got off the bus and walked the couple of hundred metres to the Villa, uphill of course. After a somewhat soggy welcome from all those present, we settled into a lovely room on the first floor overlooking the valley and hills in the distance. The Villa has been a "work in progress" for the past 400...

Friday And our last full day in Siena after what has been a really great stay. Having seen all there was to see, climb every tower and mountain in reach, and soak up the rolling hills of Toscana, and relax at the end of each day in the terrace gardens of the Palazzo Ravizzo, what else was there to do today other than to start it off by asking the hotel receptionist where the best shoe pshops are in Siena. Duly armed with a marked up map, off we set, and with only...

Tuesday A truly unbelievable start to the day. The program went something like this: 8:37 Bus from Lerici to La Spezia station arriving around 9:15 to get the 10:07 train to Pisa. Change trains at Pisa with a 30 min gap to get the train to Empoli with a 5 min gap to get another train to Siena. The time between connections became progressively shorter and with it all being on Italian trains, the odds were stacked against us, but, as it turned out, it worke...

Thursday Woke to a mill pond sea. First stop the Officio Turistico to get the mandatory map. We found the Informatzione which was like a miniature portable class room plonked in the middle of a car park. The windows were covered with posters so you couldn't see in and on one side there was a small sliding window, behind which sat a tall skinny guy in a white singlet with cigarette, gazing intently at his laptop. After the usual expression of disgust at having bee...

Sunday All settled in and mildly rested and its up and off to Grasse, the perfume capital of the world, or so it seemed. The guide books tell us that because Grasse is an old ( aren't they all?) hill top town, it can be hard to navigate. Need I say more? For 90% of the time it was all uphill, but with our trusty map and google maps on the iphone, all was not lost. After only one circumnavigation of the town, we found the Fragonard perfume factory and museum and ...