Today, I’m blogging about the bed and breakfast that we stayed at for the past three days.
As you know, my bestie stayed with us for about a week and a half and for some inexplicable reason, wanted to visit a town called Greve in Chianti which is in the province of Tuscany.
Greve in Chianti is of course famous for their quality wines as well as olive oils. I think it’s a perfect place for wine tours and I’ll blog about our visit to a wine and olive oil maker in a near future blog post 🙂
As I’ve never visited the area before, I didn’t know where to stay and didn’t want to spend anything more than 100 euro a night. It doesn’t make sense to spend a lot on lodgings considering that we’d be out most of the time.
So I did some research on Venere.com and decided on a bnb called Pian De’ Noci. I did a booking using a credit card.
The bnb is managed by Il Palagio Winery so we headed there directly after our day trip at the designer outlets, to get our keys.
It can be quite challenging to get there as the road signs are rather confusing, so it’s best to print a road map before you leave as GPS, and even phone signals doesn’t seem to work so well for me here. This was one of the biggest reason of my stress for this journey, but it’s a learning experience.
Il Palagio is next to a castle overlooking a vineyard and when you reach there, you’ll be given a sample of their wines. Cart and I don’t drink, but Hema appeared to be enjoying her Vin Santo wine which she purchased eventually. I think it was about 25 euro for a 1997 batch.
By the way, it seems that they don’t withdraw anything from the credit card but they use the number as a method of security. We paid by cash in the end.
This is funny as the sign reads, “You shouldn’t be allowed to walk if your mouth haven’t tasted wine” but the irony is that you can’t walk if you’re drunk.
Tuscany is so beautiful. Green is my favourite colour and I never got bored looking at the shades of green from the kilometres of olive trees and grapevines in the horizon. It was so peaceful and tranquil. I felt so relaxed, lost in the depths of greenness. Somehow the place reminds me a lot of Cameron Highlands with the background looking like a big green carpet.
When we finally reached our bed and breakfast, I think we were all enamored when the caretaker showed us around. The place was so lovely with its rustic charm that I immediately took pictures in its pristine state. It was beyond my expectations. Poor Cart had to carry all the luggages in from the car himself while Hema and I snapped pictures excitedly.
This is what you see as soon as you enter – a dining table and then a working kitchen, fully furnished with everything you need – cutlery, plates, cooking utensils, basic condiments, etc. You may want to stock up on some things yourself though.
Upon seeing this, I was so inspired that I insisted that we prepare dinner the next day just so that we could eat in and enjoy a relaxing evening there. There is a supermarket in the area and we just had a simple meal of gnocchi and frittata, but it was nice spending time together with my hearts.
There is a circular staircase that leads to the living room. Unlike the bnb in Milan that was warmer, this room is significantly colder due to the rather bad weather when we reached there. But I reckon it will be very refreshing during the warmer seasons.
Interestingly, I didn’t find any Italian channels on the telley and instead saw mostly German and French programs. I suppose this is a sign that a lot of the tourists that visit are mainly German and French?
Next as you walk in past the kitchen is the bathroom with a shower space which is big enough to fit Cart and the standard toilet, bidet and sink. I didn’t find any hair dryers although, I don’t think that it was included.
And here is our bedroom where Cart and I spent our two nights! I so love the choice of decoration. Very country!
The room is so sweet and cosy and inviting. And I especially like the addition of a cylindrical pillow.
You’re also given 3 different towels each – I explained to Hema that the smallest one is for the crotch, followed by a face and hands towel and the largest one for the body.
We didn’t have a window so it was very dark when you turn off the lights. So I was very confused when I woke up at about 8 am but not seeing any sunlight. But there is a door where you could open a latch and see anyone at the front door and exit there if you like.
Normally, I need time to adjust when I’m sleeping in a bed that I’m not used to. Perhaps it is the Tuscan air, but I felt so at home and so comfortable that I fell asleep with no problems.
And here is Hema’s room! She has a lovely view of the vineyard and I imagine that it will be so beautiful when September comes, when the grapes are ripe for the picking.
We snapped these on the second day we were here, when there was a bit more sun out.
Baby grapes.
Hema said that she’d come here again with her hubby.
And this is how the front of the bnb looks like. Not sure if you could see it in the picture, but there is a swimming pool underneath a tarp to the left.
There is also wifi connection here that you could use and we used it to research the places we could visit on our smartphones.
After staying there for the past three days, I was actually quite sad to be leaving the bnb. It was so charming and relaxing just to be there and I really hope that I’d be back there again.
Here is a video of the bnb. You can definitely see how excited I was to be there.
