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Ten Bloggers, One Villa, Much Wine

Ten Bloggers, One Villa, Much Wine

Posted on: Wednesday 6 November 2019

This post contains gifted experiences. Our villa on the Mansalto estate was kindly provided by Bookings For You.





Ten Bloggers:

Myself (hello I'm Amy)
Violet (organiser extraordinaire)
Liv 
Emma 
Em 


One Villa:

We stayed in Villa Le Tornaie, which was located on the Mansalto estate between Siena and Arezzo and was about two hours' drive from Pisa Airport. You do need a car to get to the villa, especially if you want to visit anywhere else during your stay and luckily we had four willing drivers (myself included) between two cars and aside from a rather traumatic rocky hill experience the driving was pretty plain sailing. 

The villa itself was the perfect chill out hideaway, complete with swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, steam room, courtyard and huge communal eating space. On our first night we were kindly treated to homemade pizza by Paolo from Massimo Ristorante Belvedere in the dining area, which was the perfect way to settle into the villa and much needed after a very long day.


Tuscany really seems to be a win win region of Italy; you can spend the day completely relaxing within the comfort of your villa, surrounded by idyllic views, you can explore nearby cities such as Florence or Siena or you can discover the history of the area, which is what we did on our first full day of the trip, with help from Arte Al Sole.

After a tour of historic Certaldo (which you need a funicular to travel to - much fun), we were treated to some drinks and nibbles at sunset at Chiosco Ai Renai (which was just the absolute dreamiest location imaginable) before a paper marbling class with Jennifer Leo (can confirm that paper marbling is highly addictive and the kind of thing I'd easily lose hours trying to create the perfect pattern).





One of my absolute favourite things about Italy is, of course, the food. After cooking us pizza on our first night, we spent our last night at Massimo Ristorante Belvedere, just a short drive away from the villa, making (and then eating) our own pasta. Despite a spectacular fail in the form of leaky eggs all over the floor I did manage to make some vaguely acceptable pasta and have even made it again since I got home (considerably more successfully this time I have to say). The pasta making was actually one of my favourite activities of our whole trip and a skill I'm very pleased to now have!


Much Wine:

Our villa was set within the vineyards of the Mansalto estate, which makes wine and olive oil, both of which we were lucky enough to sample during our stay. Not only were we left with a couple of bottles in our villa to sample, we also took part in a wine tasting as part of a tour of the vineyard and cellar (can confirm that fermenting wine smells much nicer than fermenting beer).

We all left with a new favourite red wine and are just waiting patiently for Mansalto to start selling their wine in England!



Have you ever visited Tuscany?

Amy x

A special thanks to Bookings For You for providing us with the villa for our stay and to Violet for being an super organisation machine.

Comments

  1. This sounds like such a lovely experience to have enjoyed alongside other bloggers! The weather looks as though it was beautiful for you time there too :)

    aglassofice.com x

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    1. It was gorgeous weather and I had such a fab time :) xx

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  2. What a fun experience! I'd love to visit Italy - I've never been! staying in a villa and doing all these fun activities with friends sounds amazing!

    Hope that you had a great weekend! We had our annual family photo with Santa for our Christmas cards on Saturday and then a playdate in the park on Sunday :)

    Away From Blue

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    1. Awh you should definitely visit if you get the chance it's beautiful :) xx

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  3. Looks like you had a great time. Have a lovely weekend ahead.
    Gemma x
    www.jacquardflower.uk

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Gemma, hope you're having a fab weekend xx

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