We’ve arrived in Italian heaven. We are now settled in our apartment in Badia a Coltibuono. As you enter our apartment from the abbey, there is a very large entrance area, and a very wide wooden curved stairway takes us to the upper level. This has a huuuuuuuuge central area, with a hemispherical window overlooking the lounge area below. Two single and one double bedrooms as well as a laaaaaaaaarge bathroom lead off this area. Downstairs is an enormous lounge living area, a dining area which leads through to the kitchen (fully equipped). Off the kitchen is a balcony which would comfortably accommodate about 60 people, but we don’t have 55 people we can ask around tonight to test this. There is another balcony off from the dining area. We overlook the landscaped stately gardens and the swimming pool area is beyond. On our other side are the forested hills.
Lisa, I hope you are taking note of all of this …
The abbey itself dates from the 16th century. The sitting room in the main abbey area is bliss, with the paintings around the walls done in 1574. There is a dining room and yet another sitting room leading off that. There are extensive cellars and their wine is great. I can vouch for that - we had a tour this afternoon and of course we couldn't take their word for it, so we had to have a tasting. I don’t want this entire blog to be just about our apartment because for those who are reading this in their office it may be just a tad too much first thing in the morning! And it would be rubbing it in just a bit, wouldn’t it?
We’ve had a great day really, starting with breakfast out on our Montalcino balcony with amazing views as the morning mist cleared. It was one of our slower breakfasts, partly because there wasn't a good time to leave the view, and partly because the thought of packing up and moving on was so "tiring". Once on the road, we managed a couple of photographic stops for the sensuous rolling hills, a great mix of vivid greens and canola yellows. Further along were green fields with red flowers mixed through. The brief period of what looked like bad weather produced stunning black skies - they didn’t last long but did provide some wonderful photographic opportunities – we didn’t want to miss any of those!
We called in to Ceramiche Rampini just before arriving at our apartment. The range of ceramics was absolutely stunning and I could have gone beserk, but suffice it to say that I did manage an admirable amount of restraint and there are a few lovely pieces on their way to Sydney courtesy of FedEx. Mind you, we are here for a couple of days yet so I could be tempted to head back …. with the weight bands that FedEx have in place, I still have a few kilos to “fill” so I could be easily tempted to add a few more items. I justify it by saying its cheaper than flying back to Tuscany to buy more, but then again that’s not a bad option either.
We had a lovely home cooked meal tonight, and as I finish this off Peter is just handing out coffees from the kitchen, Leanne and Val are singing along to Val’s music on his computer and Leonie is relaxing. We are all still amazed at how huge this apartment is – I’ve seen smaller houses!
I've now come down to the "office" in the abbey area which is the only place the internet connection is available from. Compared to the other rooms here, this office is tiny but in reality its the size of most people's large double bedrooms, if not bigger.
Anyway, a few snapshots from today ...
Our home for the next few nights - wow!
You can see the window and through it to the upstairs level. I tell you, this is one apartment that Grand Designs could have a whole show on!
The view from the small balcony near the dining area
One of the corridors in the abbey area - the chairs are new, as they are only just over 100 years old
the swimming pool area, which sadly won't be tried out (this time)
This is just part of the main sitting room area in the abbey - these paintings are the ones done in 1574 and I just wanted to show how hard it is staying in these places after spending hard days on the road photographing everything, testing gelatos, fitting in 5 course meals and a little bit of shopping
it may sound like a holiday to some of you reading this blog, but this is proof that I have been hard at work at the desk here!!!!!
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