We had a wonderful time staying at San Felice, it is a magical place. Here are some evening shots in and around the hotel.
Echoes of San Felice
Tag Archives: Tuscany
Friends in Tuscany
We are lucky enough to have friends in Tuscany and we all got together for dinner at San Felice. It was a wonderful night, great food, great wine and great company.
Three Kiwis and four Italians, what a special experience.
Today we leave Tuscany
Today we leave San Felice and travel to Rome. It’s an early start, but the upside is capturing the view of Tuscany from our front door at 7am.
Welcome to San Felice
On Tuesday we moved from Relais Vignale in Radda to San Felice for a few days. Jean has really been looking forward to getting here and was like a kid on Christmas morning – up early on Tuesday, packed and ready to go before breakfast, just wanting to get here although it is only a 20 minute drive.
For those who don’t know, we visited San Felice last year and Jean fell in love with it – so this year we get to stay a few days.
San Felice is a hotel which is made up of an entire traditional Italian Borgo (village). It retains a village feel but has around 50 rooms and suites in the old buildings as well as two restaurants (one of which has a Michelin star), a pool, indoor and outdoor bars, shops, a wine tasting room and two churches.
Jean fell in love with the room, so she shot one of her famous one take videos.
After a couple of days by the pool and a dinner with friends last night in the casual restaurant, San Felice is living up to expectations. Jean doesn’t want to leave – which could be a problem on Friday when we move back to Rome.
From seafood and bustle to meat and quiet
We have been in Tuscany for a couple of days and the contrast with Positano is dramatic. Gone is the bustle and noise of the busy seaside town, replaced by the quiet of rural Tuscany. The noisiest thing we hear are the church bells ringing out on the hour or the distant sound of tyres on white roads (gravel roads).
The constants are the long lasting summer weather and the incredible sunsets.
We moved into Relais Vignale in Radda in Chianti a few days ago and it felt like catching up with an old friend. We booked the same room as last year so enjoyed our own private garden and a room with enough room to swing many cats – if we so wished.
Marco still runs the bar like a military operation and remembered us from last year. The pool was still there but with new seats and loungers. The big change was the restaurant – Vignale Ristorante – which has a new manager, who has taken it’s slightly tired and stodgy menu and reinvented it with traditional local cuisine with a modern feel.
The restaurant uses its terrace view to great effect and we spent the first evening enjoying some delicious food – lots of meat and not much seafood, excellent local wine and the view of the sun slowly setting beyond the olive trees.
If you’re staying at Relais Vignale in the next wee while (that would be you Tony W) give the restaurant a shot. I’m sure you’ll be in for a great evening.
We have also been able to catch up with our friends Olga and Dani. We’ve had meals out and meals in – including a traditional kiwi barbecue at their place, with an Italian flavour. Marinated chicken, Italian sausages and a huge slice of prosciutto went on the barbecue, accompanied by arancini, courtesy of Dani, focaccia courtesy of our NZ friend Tina and everything else courtesy of Olga.
There was food for a dozen people but the 5 of us made a good dent in it.
Good morning Tuscany
Sunday morning in Tuscany, not a bad way to start the day.
Back to Italy
We weren’t planning to visit Italy this year. Last year’s trip was on such a scale and the credit card bills were so large that we were genuinely planning a “stay at home” year.
But last year, on a whim, we had pencil booked a two week stay at Casetta Arienzo in Positano for August this year.
We ignored the time late last year when we usually book the early bird flights to Europe. We were mentally not going, we had checked out, so to speak.
Until an email arrived in May from the lovely people at Eden Roc Hotel asking us to confirm or cancel the booking for Casetta Arienzo. That changed things.
Or more accurately, we came to our senses.
Within a fortnight in May we arranged everything – flights (thank you Petra our lovely travel agent of 25 years), hotels (some old favourites and some new experiences), train trips, rental cars in Italy and all that goes along with a holiday.
We are going for a month, staying in Positano for two weeks, spending a week or so catching up with friends in Tuscany and making up the remaining time in Rome.
Time has flown and it’s now mid August and we’re flying out in a couple of days. We can’t wait.
Photos and more photos
We’ve been home from Italy for just over a month. Time for us to settle back into home life, sort through all the photographs we’ve taken, and load a selection into a holiday gallery on SmugMug.
If you’d like to see some shots from the blog and some new ones you won’t have seen, click here.
All the photos were taken using iPhones – as opposed to the usual Nikon camera back and lenses I have lugged to Europe in the past. All in all, apart from not having any real control over the depth of field, they look pretty good.
Friends
This week we have been out and about in Tuscany with friends. We have known Dani and Olga for many years. We got to know them when Olga helped us find villas to stay in and our friendship has grown since then. It has been 4 years since we last saw them so it was great to reconnect.
We have been spoilt this last week with dinners and days out. Tina, our friend from back hom who has spent the last few weeks holidaying in Positano. She came north for a few days so we could all catch up.
We have visited some great restaurants and eaten so well. But the most special meal was at Dani and Olga’s place – a kiwi barbecue – with friends Matteo and Francesca who own Pornanino Olive Oil farm which produces some of the finest olive oil we have ever tasted.
Olga and Dani, thank you so much for making our visit so memorable.
Footnote: The barbecue we used is a Lotus Grill charcoal barbecue. It’s a very clever design that burns charcoal but is pretty much smokeless. It’s a really clever piece of kit designed in Germany. Fathers Day isn’t far away …
A wander around San Felice
San Felice is a luxury hotel complex located in the heart of Chianti. It is an old village that has been bought and developed as a hotel, while still retaining the feel of a typical Tuscan village.
It is a magical place with 30 suites and 29 rooms plus two churches, a range of shops, a spa, a winery as well as two restaurants, one of which has just received their first Michelin star.
Our friends Dani and Olga showed us around and we spent a hour or so wandering through the Borgo and tasting wine in the cellar room which was lovely.
This could well be a stop on our next trip.
Return to Tuscany
On Monday we arrived in Radda in Chianti, our home for the next few days. Radda is a hill top village located between Firenze and Siena in the Chianti hills.
We have stayed at Relais Vignale before and it’s a great base to discover the Chanti region and all it has to offer. The hotel spans several buildings, all in a style which is called “toscana rustica” – the same style as the stone villas and cottages we all see in photos of Tuscany.
We were lucky enough to have our room upgraded to a junior suite so we now have an enormous room and a courtyard outside where we can sit in the evenings.
The style of food has also changed – from the seafood of Venice and Liguria to the meat and poultry of Tuscany. On Monday night we ate chicken and steak, expertly prepared in the hotel restaurant – all washed down with a fine bottle of local chianti.
The next few days will see us catch up with our dear friends who live here as well as explore some of the local towns and villages.
Our itinerary
I’ve had a few requests for the itinerary for our Italian odyssey. So here goes:
- 24 July – Depart Wellington
- 25 July – Arrive in Rome, stay 3 nights
- 28 July – Train to Venice, stay 4 nights
- 1 August – Train to Florence, collect rental car, drive to Camogli, stay 7 nights
- 7 August – Drive to Radda in Chianti, Tuscany, stay 5 nights
- 12 August – Train to Naples and then driver to Positano, stay 3 weeks
- 2 September – Train to Rome stay 4 nights
- 6 September – Depart Rome for home
- 8 September – Arrive in Wellington – recover from jetlag
So there you have it – 7 weeks in 9 lines. Simple.
Chianti with friends
Our short stay in Chianti in Tuscany was a chance to catch up with friends – some Italian locals and some Kiwi’s on tour. For three days all we seemed to do was eat and drink and tour the small villages of Chianti.
The base for our stay was the delightful Relais Vignale in Radda in Chianti. Spread across a number of traditional tuscan buildings, this hotel is a great way to enjoy a break without being limited to the “Saturday to Saturday” villa booking cycle. The service is excellent – in fact the manager Serena went out of her way to help us when our booking was affected by our overly long stay in Hong Kong.
We met up with friends from New Zealand who were staying just up the road and our good local friends Olga and Dani. Meals were had and stories relayed.
As always when in Chianti, the surprises were off the beaten track – the small village restaurant we stopped at for lunch and the gallery where the artist told us the story behind the small print we fell in love with and bought.
But after a shortened stay we packed up our rental car with our already expanding suitcases, farewelled friends, and headed north to Camogli for a week by the sea.
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- Relais Vignale
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- Relais Vignale
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- Relais Vignale in the evening
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- Relaxing in the evening
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- Lunch at Il Guerrino in Montefioralle
The train to Florence
Getting around Italy by high speed train is easy and relaxing. We have regularly used it between Rome, Florence and Naples in the past and this trip is no exception.
The one thing we haven’t done before is try out Trenitalia’s premium class. This is half a carriage of luxury seating – 8 seats in all – right at the front of the train. It costs a bit more but comes with a meal service, a cabin crew member to look after you and your luggage and more legroom than you could want. There is even a conference room in the carriage if a quick meeting is needed en route.
On this leg of our journey from Rome to Florence we treated ourselves and booked seats 2A and 2B.
Under a Tuscan sunset
Last Friday we visited our dear friends Dani and Olga at their home for dinner. We had not seen their new house before or the delightful hamlet it is part of. As the sun set, we took some photographs that go some way to capturing the beauty of the area.
The meal was absolutely superb and the company delightful. Grazie mille Dani and Olga.
La dolce far niente 