Fellow travelers:
My wife and I are avid RS followers, having visited many of the "back doors" across Europe. We spent five days in Tuscany last month and enjoyed it very much. We highly recommend visiting the region and staying in an agritourismo. Here are some tips and information from our experience.
We stayed at Tenuta Santo Pietro near Pienza. The place is in a beautiful setting with a gorgeous sunset view of Pienza. The food was great and the staff were friendly, knowledgeable and accommodating. Our room was large and clean. The inn is quiet even though it is right on the Pienza-Montepulciano road. This is a central location within an easy drive of Rick’s favorite Tuscan hill towns. Two per day was enough for us… Sienna and Volterra, Cortona and Montepulciano, etc.
There are many agritourismos in Tuscany so shop around online. Try to get one that offers breakfast (ours was included) and dinner (ours was extra). After a long day of driving and walking you will want to enjoy your wine and dinner without having to drive back to your lodging afterwards. Tenuta Santo Pietro has an excellent chef with a different menu every evening. He even fried up some peppers we bought in the markets.
Driving… rent a car with an automatic transmission even if you know how to shift. The roads are very hilly and winding and you will wear yourself out shifting. DO NOT stay in the fast lane on the freeways. Use it to pass ONLY. Rent something other than the smallest Fiat. The extra cost is well worth it to be comfortable. Avoid driving at night. The locals know the roads, you don’t.
We rented from Alamo. We picked up the car at the Florence airport (FLR) and returned it at the Rome airport (ROM). The Alamo agency at FLR is outside but adjacent to the offsite rent car building where the other agencies are. At ROM Alamo works through Enterprise so look for their (small) signs at the rental return garage.
Italian restrooms are notoriously “spartan”. It’s not a bad idea to carry toilet paper, hand soap and paper towels in your walking around bag. Many toilets, even in “nice” places don’t have toilet seats.
Use a GPS or map ap. We used ForeverMap on the iPad. Be sure to download the maps you’ll need before your set out. ForeverMap worked great for us and doesn’t require an internet connection. We learned to believe the map ap before the road signs. There are often several routes marked with signs but the map ap always showed the shortest/fastest route.