We enjoyed satellite trips to the towns of Pontedare, Castelfalfi, and Luca, having good meals in all three. In a future post I’m collecting all my photos of what we ate in Tuscany, but I will say here that all my best gelato was in these three towns.

The weather was highly variable. For example. in Luca there was pounding hail, pouring rain, and blue sky, all in the same afternoon.

In Luca we stopped in a lovely art store where I purchased two journals, a leather one with handmade paper which I’ll paint in as an artist journal, and a marbeled one with smooth thin paper for my rambling thoughts in fountain pen.

The photos shown below are first of Pontedara, then Castlefalfil, which had great vistas from on top of the hill, and Luca, which is a walled city captured by Napoleon, and surrounded by magnificent pollarded trees.

Follow  us around through this post; there was so much that was interesting.

I’m grateful to our hosts for making these side trips possible, as we had no car.