On the advice of our hotel owner, he said we could rent a scooter and ride to Siena then back to Pisa in one day. We headed out around 9:30am and went to rent a 125cc scooter at Florence By Bike for 65 Euros/day. Helmets, locks, and maps were included. The staff there gave us an excellent itinerary to follow to reach Siena but discouraged us from going to Pisa since it would be a very long ride and we’d have to rush from place to place.

We finally got on the road at 11am and after riding for about 30-60 minutes, we arrived at our first stop, Greve in Chianti. We had lunch at the marketplace of bruschetta brie and truffle oil (oh so good!) and panini sandwiches (a bit dry).

Along the way we stopped at Panzano for pictures of the beautiful rolling green hills and we stopped at Castellina in Chianti for wine, truffles in oil, gelato (fragola – strawberry, pesca – peach, Ron’s new favorite flavor of gelato). Next we stopped in Siena and checked out the Piazza del Campo. We had a granite coffee with creme (like a frapuccino but more ice-y). We stopped at Monteriggioni and bought a bottle of white wine.

Our last stop was San Gimignano where we had a wonderful dinner at Hotel Belsoggiorno. The restaurant has a nice view and the food was delicious. The T-bone steak we had was huge and well worth the 40 Euros! We also had beef carpaccio, soup, and risotto.

This should be the happy ending to our journey but we had an “adventure” on the way back. It was around 9:30pm when we left and already dark. We had told our hotel owner that we would be back around 9pm but we weren’t able to call them to let him know because we didn’t have a key. We got quite lost on the way back and it started to drizzle. We went the wrong way and had to turn back a few times. We ended up on the highway and we don’t think we were allowed to be on the highway with the type of scooter we were on. We eventually arrived back to our hotel and the hotel owner was up waiting for us, smoking and drinking because he was worried. We felt really bad but we thought, wow, what good service and concern. He said he was so worried since he was the one who recommended we rent a scooter and that when he said we could do the trip in one day, it was because he himself did the trip with a motorcycle!

Boy what a scary trip back to our hotel but thanks to Ron keeping his cool, we made it safely back.

If you can’t see the slideshow above, click HERE.