Trip Report
Adult Getaway Trip to Rome and Tuscany (Pallazonne)

Italy

Our family trip was an adults-only trip that my husband and I took with his parents. We flew into Rome, about an hour south of Tuscany, and spent 4 days in Rome, about 2 blocks away from St. Peter’s Square. We explored Rome on foot for four days, which we absolutely loved.

We then returned to the airport (none of us wanted to drive within Rome’s city limits), and rented a car and drove north to Tuscany. We did not have a GPS because my husband and father-in-law are born navigators. It is pretty simple to get to most of the small Tuscan towns using a map. We never got lost. We drove to each town in Tuscany (with the exception of Florence—instead, we took a train which made everything pretty stress-free).

We stayed at Castlerotto, a working vineyard and olive orchard, for a week and traveled daily to many of the hill towns, including Sienna, Florence, Montepulciano, Verona, Montecino, etc. We would usually wake up and have a simple breakfast and head to a small town for the day – took a break at about 1 PM in each town and had a leisurely wonderful lunch at a small family-run restaurant. We then spent the rest of the day site-seeing and headed back to Castlerotto to cook a simple meal and enjoy the local wine.

Gianna was one of the warmest and generous people we have ever met and we were truly so sad to leave. Her husband was also very nice but he is always busy working on the land. Their children were around for periods of time. All three are grown and at college but are actively helping with the family business.

We would love to go back. I think if we went back, we may want to go in the fall during harvest.

The accommodations were wonderful. The grounds were breathtaking – view the photos on the website. There is a pool on site that would be wonderful during the summer. The weather for us was very nice (guessing in the 70s). We are not big heat people – so May was a wonderful time to go. In Rome, it rained (torrential downpour)—so we had to wear rain jackets and hats with brims so we didn’t get wet (we walked everywhere). But we wanted to beat the heat, so it didn’t matter to us.

I Wish We Had More Time to/in:
Siena—I loved that city and would have like to see it at night.

I Wish We Had Skipped:
Cortona—it was a little commercial and busy. This is the place that "Under the Tuscan Sun" was filmed, so there were a lot of tourists mingling around.

If I Returned, I Would:
…try to return at the time of the olive harvest, based on Gianna’s stories. The olives are pressed in this small stone building with a large wheel. There are several stone wall ovens that are lit with wood fires to heat the room to get the olive oil to flow. Everyone from town comes to help harvest and press the olives because there is a fairly small time window to work with. After the first press, the workers gather and make bruschetta in the stone ovens to celebrate their gratitude for the harvest. To me, it couldn’t get better than that. Wonderful wine, beautiful olive oil, family, faith and yummy bruschetta!

Our Top 3 Family Highlights:
We loved Rome. I had never been to Rome or Italy, but my husband and his folks have been there before. Some of the highlights: seeing the Pieta in St. Peter’s (takes your breath away), Siena (they make the piazza into a horse race arena in July; great cowboy boots too!), and our day in Montepulciano. This is a very small town and maybe we are so fond of it because it was the first hill town we visited.

We had such fun traveling together. It was wonderful because this is the first time in many years that we actually were able to focus on spending time together one-on-one and not focused on being parents and grandparents. The whole purpose of the trip was for my husband’s folks to go on a “grown up” vacation with each of their boys and their spouses when they turned forty. Great concept!.