Tuscany
This cold weather is all the more noticeable when the previous week you were sleeping under a single sheet, swimming in an outdoor pool or eating al fresco. That's exactly what me and Liv were doing last week at a villa in Tuscany. The holiday was essentially an extended get together for Liv's University of Limerick friends - 19 people in total, me the new kid. The villa was perfect. You might think that cramming 19 people into a villa is a recipe for madness, but the villa somehow managed to be spacious enough to house everyone in comfort without ever feeling cavernous or impersonal. Remarkably at no point did it ever feel crowded, even when we were all squashed around the dinner table. I think this is because there were plenty of places to slope off to have a quiet moment by yourself and get some rest, and enough people there that you were never missed if you did.Most people's days broadly followed one of two routines:
1) Get up, have breakfast, relax by the pool, have lunch, relax by the pool, have dinner, have a drink, go to bed.
2) Get up, have breakfast, go on a trip, have dinner, have a drink, go to bed.
It is hard to decide which was the more pleasurable itinerary. The views from the villa, set amongst a vineyard, where fantastic. The Tuscan villages and towns were fun to visit. And as you might expect in Tuscany, the food was great regardless of whether it was cooked by ourselves or served by a waiter.
Good food + good surroundings + good company + good weather = a great holiday.
The pictures are here, my personal favourite being this one showing the view from our bedroom window. The view out of the window right now couldn't be more different. There's also a group photo here.
Labels: holiday
