Venice

We ended our trip to Italy in Venice, a very beautiful and apparently popular city to visit.  It was very crowded.  We were told that Venice averages 50,000 tourists a day!  Fortunately, once you got away from St. Marks Square,  there seemed to be plenty of room to move about and explore.  And if you got up early in the morning, St. Marks Square was occupied only by pidgeons.

The opening photo is of the famous Rialto Bridge.  I believe it was the very first bridge built in Venice.

More Tuscany

It seems like every where you look in Tuscany there's another beautiful scene to behold, not to mention take a photograph of.  This was another of many taken along the dirt road leading to Il Rigo.

Il Rigo

This is the main house of the agriturismo where we stayed.  It's called Il Rigo.  Where I was standing to take this picture is where the house was that we actually stayed (see photo below).  We would go down to the main house for a wonderful breakfast in the mornings.  We also went down a couple of times to enjoy some gourmet dinners that were prepared by the owner of the villa.  We were treated to such things as red wine and sausage risotto, rabbit cacciatore and tomato bisque.

Our room was there in the middle with the open shutters

Tuscany Road

Where we stayed in the Pienza area of Tuscany, there are numerous agriturismo's, or farm houses that have been converted into bed and breakfast villas.  Found this dirt road leading to yet another agriturismo.

Tuscany Poppies

On our recent trip to Italy, we spent 3 wonderful days in Tuscany.  One of the things I wanted to photograph were the beautiful red poppies.  Unfortunately, the picture above shows the only field of poppies we saw.  We came to learn that we were about 2 to 3 weeks early for the height of the poppy season.  Oh well, it was still very nice in Tuscany.