The curse of the pulpo strikes back...

Okay, so we didn't actually have more pulpo (octopus), although there was a little store in Greve (a little town about 20km south of florence) that advertised itself as a server of octopus..., but I just decide that anything bad that happens (or anything stupid we do) is because of that darned pulpo.

So, we last left off in Florence, about to head out for the Tuscan countryside. After spending 4 hours debating over the intelligence of renting a "Sasha" (scrubs fans will know what I mean) we nixed the idea of renting a scooter (moped). We would fansifully envision ourselves, carefree, laughing, as we zoomed effortless around the Tusan countryside. Then we would see the probable reality of our mangled bodies being scraped off the crowded, zooming streets of Florence...so, after lamenting our inability to "live on the edge", we decided to randomly take a bus out to Greve. We were smart.

We met up with Francesca, a delightful director of a tourist office who set us up with a vineyard tour/wine tasting and a night in a bed and breakfast with Ada and Paolo.

So we headed back up to our campsite for our last night of camping in Italy, packed up our bags the next morning and spent the next 2 1/2 glorious days in the Chianti region. We had a "tour" of the tiny vineyard (who only produces 5000 bottles of wine each year and they ONLY sell their wine, olive oil and other goods at their farm), which took about 15 minutes and consisted of our Romanian tour guide (who continually apologized for not speaking perfectly in her THIRD language) giving us random, broken bits of info about the place. We sat down for an absolutely amazing lunch with the best olive oil I have ever had and then the real info began to pour out. It turns out that our guide understands Spanish, so I would ask questions in spanish and she would respond in Italian (and I could amazingly understand most of what she said)...we found out about what makes a good crop, good temperatures, what porportions of wines are mixed, how long they are fermented, how old a grape vine is, how long they produce grapes, etc etc etc. We felt good supporting this small, family business especially in the face of the GIANT vineyards that aparently monopolise the wine industry there...

We then spent uncountable hours in Le Cantine, an "enoteca"--wine store with over1500 different wines, olive oils, balsamic vinegars, etc. And came out with everyone's christmas, birthday, everything gifts for the next 20 years.

anyway, we decided to stay two nights there and risk the quick transport from there to Florence to Rome to Ciampino airport the next morning before 10:15am. So we arose at 4;30...had a delicious breakfast from Paolo (who served us food at 5am in his pajamas!), caught our bus at 5:45, arrived at 6:40 in florence and found that the train we though left at 7am, actually left at 6:40, so we waited around for the train that would arrive in Rome at 9:30, leaving us 50 minutes to get from the train station to Ciampino airport before they closed check-in....needless to say, the train was late and we spent the next 20 minutes running around trying to get to the airport (aparently NO TAXIS will take you there...), we found a bus that left at 10am and, thinking that since the airport was only 15km from the center, we would be fine. HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! 45 minutes later, we arrived at the airport (thank you nasty traffic of Rome), realized we missed our flight to belfast, had to wait in line for 20 minutes to get a new plane ticket, found out that it would cost nearly $600 to fly to befast that night or the next day, decided on a cheap flight to Newcastle, England (not knowing where Newcastle actually was...), took that flight, got to newcastle, spent an hour with a lovely lady there who helped us figure out that the cheapest way to ireland was another flight (thank goodness for discount carriers!) and booked a flight to Dublin for the next day...

in the end, we actually came out only slightly more expensive than had we made our flight to belfast, but lets just say that there were some very crabby nicks and kristins for about 24 hours....

anyway, i'm going to let nick type the next blog and update you all on ireland...