We schlepped our luggage by walking through Haut de Cagnes - much easier than taking the car through the ridiculously small streets of the village.  It was rather strenuous which was good because our exercise has been pretty much confined to eating with occasional walking.  Our Mercedes popped out of its mountain hideaway and we were off.  With trusty Clive navigating we took the A8 highway out of France and into Italy.  The way was all highway until we almost reached our destination of Pelago, Italy (about 30 minutes to the east of Florence).  But, the drive was not very pleasant because for the first about 2/3's it was more tunnel than open.  We must have gone through 150 tunnels (I am not exaggerating) which meant you couldn't really read and there was no scenery to be seen.  Randy got really tired of it.  We stopped at a rest stop (this being a toll road we only stopped at the designated rest stops) and ate our leftovers from breakfast (which included the best croissants ever) in the car.  The toll totaled about 40 euro - ouch!

With Clive doing his thing we took the small roads from the highway to our house in Pelago with only a few wrong turns.  We are staying at the rental apartment of Jane and Mario Borghini (who are gone right now) and their friend Gianni greeted us.  The apartment is downstairs from their side of a duplex in the countryside surrounded by olive trees and vineyards.  It is large with two bedrooms and two bathrooms (yeah!) and washer/dryer, etc.  The only thing it lacks is internet so I am wracking up big bills using my portable connection through the cellular service.

Randy enjoying his croissant in the car during the arduous drive to Florence

Vineyards of Verrazzano Winery

Entry to the main house at Verrazzano Winery

Our friendly guide Maria

Poles where they hang the white grapes to age for vin santo

The group in one of the storage rooms - after aging a worker crawls through a very small door on the front of the barrel (visible left bottom corner) and cleans the inside of the barrel

Aging hams - we can attest that all of their pork products (and there are many) are excellent

Alice is happy to be near so much fine wine

Several kinds of salami, prosciutto ham, wild boar sausage (middle) and the wonderful sopressata (top right)

The farro salad

The cabbage soup

Our table saying Salut!

The "Ferrari" of the winery - riserva Chianti Classico

In vino veritas

View from our Tuscan home

Our Mercedes in front of our home (we have the bottom part)

Our big event was the wine dinner I had scheduled at the Verrazzano winery in Greve, Chianti, about 1 hour from our place.  This was recommended by our friend Gina Gloski and it was a great recommendation.  Once a week on Thursdays they do a farm to table dinner with accompanying wines after a winery tour.  This winery also makes its own honey, olive oil, hams and balsamic vinegar.  It is a beautiful hill top estate in the middle of Chianti Classico with parts that date to 1100.  Our friendly guide Maria showed us the various storage rooms for wines, pork products and vinegar.  See photos to know how historic and atmospheric it was.  We (there were 10 of us - a family of four from Vancouver Canada, a couple from England and a couple of optometrists from Hong Kong) then had their sparkling wine and olives in the courtyard and went into the dining area.  The meal that followed was splendid if daunting.  It started with two of their Chiantis - they poured for us but left the bottles on the table so we could have as much as we wanted - and an assortment of their pork products including wild boar sausage (very good) and my favorite, the sopressata.  This was the best pork item I can remember tasting.  A salad of farro with tomato, cucumber and basil was outstanding.  Next was a thick cabbage and tomato soup with some pasta - this tasted much better than it sounds.  Next was roasted guinea fowl with the best roasted potatoes.  I left the meat to the others and loaded up on the potatoes (we were sitting with the Hong Kong couple).  The main meat course was sliced steak served with the house 12 year old aged balsamic vinegar and the reserve Chianti Classico.  And, another wine of Syrah.  Really outstanding combination.  Dessert was a vanilla mouse with their own vin santo in it and crushed cookies accompanied by vin santo and grappa.  I think that makes a total of six wine products we enjoyed with this feast.  As our friend Ash says, we should go ahead and apply for our liver transplants early.

We bought the reserve vin santo, the reserve grappa and the balsamic vinegar, and Maria threw in two bottles of honey and two bottles of their own wine jelly.  The total price for dinner and tour was 52 euros a person.  If you are in Italy you must stay a Thursday night and do this dinner!  Randy drove slowly home with Clive navigating.  Clive did have an unusual slip (we think he got into the grappa while we were eating) and tried to take us to Arezza which is a town about an hour from Pelago.  Alice noticed the mistake fortunately before we actually got on the wrong roads and reprogrammed Clive who was by then sober enough to take us to Pelago.