Ahhhhhh, more of the same

Our adventure continues. We're in the middle of the 2nd week now and still having a wonderful time. I'm writing from the small town nearest to our villa called Tavernelle. Tavernelle sits about halfway between Florence and Siena.
We took a nice drive the other day around the countryside. We visited a ceremic factory that had a showroom and wandered around an ancient castle. We also visited an old monestary that is now in private hands (after Napoleon came through and de-monkified it. They still make wine there though, of which we bought some--very good wine. Those monks knew what they were doing.
Allen and I had an adventure today when we drove our guests this week, Todd & Marge Evans, into Florence. Normally, when I go into Florence, I drive right to the train station and park. But because we were in rush hour traffic, and they had reservations for a particular time for the Uffizi (the big museum in Florence), we dropped them at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge that spans the Arno River. They took our only map, so Allen and I had to negotiate our way out of Florence without a map through very narrow winding streets. It was fun in its own way, especially since we got to a place which we knew and then found our way out of Florence. For a while though I had visions of us just circling around and around through these ancient streets for another eternity.
Tomorrow we have the cook coming in again. She's quite fun and makes it really enjoyable. One of the things she'll be teaching us how to make is gnocchi--yum. I'm sure it will be another spectacular meal.
I've read all your comments and really don't have much to say about them except damn those lemmings--Iàll never get that image out of my head.
Ciao!