30 September - San Gimignano, Tuscany, Italy

What a day we had today. I'll try to recreate it. Up at 7:30 for breakfast and last minute packing. Walk our suitcases the 500m to the local water bus (Vaporetto) station, wait for Vaporetto. Take Vaporetto and cruise down the Grand Canal to St Lucia railway station in Venice. Catch train from Santa Lucia to Mestre station on mainland. Find Herz rental car office in Mestre. Staff looking very worried - do they actually have a car for us? - lots of agitated conversation in Italian. We're eventually offered a 9 seater Opel minibus with tons of luggage space - hooray! Switch on John's Tom Tom and figure out how to get out of Venice and on to the Autostrada. Then a nice 300km trip through numerous tunnels as we cross Italy's central mountain range as I get used to driving a fairly large, manual shift vehicle on the right side of the road. Eventually reach the region of Florence as we emerge into the Tuscan landscape. It is just as dramatic as it looks in photographs. In every direction there is an incredible view. Hard to concentrate on driving. The GPS only takes us so far - then we have to rely on the quaint instructions provided by our host. This takes us on winding little roads through the village of San Gimignano which appears to be hundreds of years old, and then finally up a dirt road and as we round a bend it's like we are driving into a painting. A very friendly young woman, with very good English greets us like long lost friends and shows us our fantastic apartment complete with antique Italian furniture. We decide to drive to a local supermarket to buy supplies to dine in. What a pleasant surprise to find fantastic wines, fresh food and bread at fantastic prices so that we can dine in true Tuscan fashion.

No matter which window we look out of, the view looks like something hanging in an art gallery.

At this stage our main aim for the next few days is too explore this wonderful part of the world, especially the ancient city of Sienna. After three days here we drive down to the Amalfi Coast for four days before we finally drive to Rome and then home sweet home.