# 20th Anniversary in Tuscany



## BruteForce (Dec 30, 2009)

My lovely wife and I will have been married 20 years in November (2010). To celebrate, and to make up for our lack of a real wedding or honeymoon, I want to surprise her with a trip to Tuscany.

I've contacted a travel agent to assist, but my desire is to do the following:

- Travel to Tuscany or Florence area
- Find a private and scenic B&B to stay in (for ~3-4 days)
- Tour the area (Chianti, etc for a few days)
- Travel by train to the Austrian Alps
- Into Germany

I can handle everything from Austria to Germany (having lived there for ~17 years courtesy of the US Army), but the Italy area is new to me.

Ideally, I'd like to re-propose to my wife in Tuscany.

I've read many of the posts here already, but if anybody has a desire to share ideas, destinations and a great B&B, please do respond.


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## Lourdes (Jan 20, 2010)

*lovely idea for your anniversary *

Ciao BruteForce,

Your plan to re-propose to your wife in Tuscany sounds very romantic. The location is also ideal for that .

If you're still looking for ideas, I recommend you plan on staying in the *Chianti* countryside outside of Florence so you can have a romantic location but still close enough to the city so that you can come in to Florence for a day trip or dinner. 

You'll definitely need to rent a car for those 3-4 days to make it easy for you to move around.

I can recommend at least two very romantic B&Bs in Chianti, both with great reviews: Palazzo Malaspina in San Donato in Poggio and Villa il Poggiale in San Casciano, just a few km from the first. Both are in the same general area in Chianti just a little off the Florence-Siena roadway so both are easy to get to, making it also easy to get to Florence and Siena from there.

You could plan *a day in Florence*, a *day in Siena* and another day just to roam around *Chianti*, visiting vineyards or just the hill towns in Chianti.
Just outside of San Donato in Poggio you could visit the wine cellars and do a tasting of the wines at *Fattoria Montecchio* - we visited a few months ago and really liked both the tour and the tasting, read more about our day in Chianti on our blog.

On the other hand, you could also plan on staying in *Florence* and go into Chianti with a group like we did and to Siena by train. So the first, but difficult task you have to decide is *where to base yourself in* while here. 
For example, a very romantic B&B in Florence would be Casa del Garbo, located right in Piazza della Signoria with view on Palazzo Vecchio and the most important square in the city. I can recommend others if you need me to.

There are many things you can do while here, the hard part is to decide what. If you need any help at all, let us know!!

Have fun planning your trip . It will be a great surprise for your wife!


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## squizzy1 (Feb 3, 2010)

*every woman in the forum is green with envy!*

Many compliments, a great surprise for your wife! I would suggest you to consider also the town of LUCCA and the Cinque Terre


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## Lourdes (Feb 4, 2010)

*Lucca would be a great day trip as well*

... and I would have recommended *Cinque Terre* if he was here for more than just 3 days - it takes about 2.5 hours from Florence to get there.... unless of course he were to consider it a stop on his way to the Austrain Alps. 
If BruteForce wants to consider that, there are several threads on the forum that mention how to get to Cinque Terre - of course a walk along the "Way of Love" part of the coastal trail would be mandatory 

Lucca is just about an hour train ride from Florence and is a small walled town, very charming and a walk around on the walls which are now a park would certainly be romantic .


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