Borgo di Cortefreda

The pretty little park across from our hotel was the Parco San Donato, and that was where I went for my morning Tai Chi and a two-mile run, just the thing for jet-lagged legs.  It was a beautiful, sunny day, the first of many such days during a time of year that was supposed to be rainy and cold.  I passed some other runners and walkers along the way enjoying the weather – Indian Summer, Italian version.

We took a taxi back to the airport and after only a brief wait met Jackie, our tour director for this first chapter of our trip called A Culinary Journey Through Tuscany and Florence, which we discovered through Our State Magazine.  We had wanted to sign up last year but the 2023 tour filled up before we could, so we had plenty of time to read about it and look at photos of previous trips on Facebook.  Chapter Three of our trip was another tour through Trafalgar Tours – Best of Italy – which we had also awaited for quite some time.  During the ten days between the two tours, Chapter Two, Martha had found an Airbnb in the heart of historic Florence, a city which we had heard about for years from Martha’s now 94-year-old aunt, who had traveled abroad many times and always said Florence was her favorite destination.  Well into her 80s, she would stay in Florence with an elderly friend – “all we needed was a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine every day,” she often said.  During our time in Florence, Martha had signed us up for tickets to many of the not-to-be-missed things to see in the city.

Jackie was the perfect tour director, friendly and approachable, fluent in Italian, and obviously very much in love with the country.  Like previous tour directors we had known in the past, she was knowledgeable in history, architecture, and culture, and over the next several days she made our visit to Tuscany a fulfilling and memorable one.  She was at the airport to meet us and two other couples (a larger group would be arriving on a later flight) and drive us to our location, the Hotel Borgo di Cortefreda, tucked in the rolling hills of Tuscany between two little villages, where we would be staying the entire time until our Airbnb in Florence.  Staying in one place night after night, not having to pack and unpack, was one of the things that was so appealing about this tour.  I had already found the Borgo di Cortefreda on Google Maps and spent some time using the street view feature, virtually “driving” up and down the two-lane Via Cassia, exploring the area.  Now we were driving past actual acres of olive trees and vineyards, chatting with the other two couple we had picked up, and marveling at the beautiful countryside of Tuscany all around us.

We were greeted by a hotel cat (we love hotel cats!) who was very vocal – did I detect an Italian accent in his “miao”?

The grounds of the hotel were absolutely beautiful, with views out over the rolling hills, and only a short walk to the nearest village.  We settled in and then met the rest of our forty-or-so fellow travelers on the trip, most of them from North Carolina because of the Our State Magazine connection, at a wine reception featuring hors d'oeuvres (or, I should say, antipasti) and plentiful glasses of prosecco, followed by dinner.  

 Let the Culinary Journey begin!