Italy Day 7

We're having a lazy day today, staying just nearby the village (we didn't even drive yet). We get up late, but go to bed even later (the kids around 11pm), so everybody is a little short on sleep, and we didn't feel like complicated activities today.

In the last few days we've done a lot already. On day 3 we went to an ancient Etruscan capital (Vetulonia) and visited the archeological sites there (Chris and Clara also visited the museum) - but there's not really any pictures, even though it was cool to see streets, houses and water systems from the 6th century BC. We spent the hot lunch time there and in a nice local restaurant, and then got to the beach at 4pm: perfect waves, fewer crowds (though it was still crowded), and beautiful sunshine for another 4 hours or so.

Chris and Clara in the waves.

Another day we went to a really well-preserved medieval town that used to be on an important trade route. It's a huge tourist destination, and for us it was interesting to finally see the masses of foreign tourists that come to Tuscany. So far we hadn't seen much of them, since our area and all our activities have been kind of off the beaten track. We lucked out many times on this trip - finding a parking spot in the crazy traffic, finding a yummy slice of pizza with no wait or line when we were hungry:

The pizza is bigger than our head!

The line formed right after us.

We climbed a very high tower and had a wonderful view of the surrounding hills and valleys. (Maybe Chris has some pictures.) It was hot, and after a while of walking through the town, and the "world's best gelato" - which was actually really delicious - we were lucky to find a shady playground with a "double" swing:

We ended up in the only restaurant in our "home" town for dinner, where we had yummy pizza (again) and some wine.

'Forest' pizza, with mushrooms and wild boar meat.

The next day we went to the beach again, another section that was a bit more remote (and less crowded), and also had calmer water (the kids could walk for tens of meters into the sea). Unfortunately we weren't so clever about the timing and didn't have an umbrella, so we got our first (slight) sunburns in the hot sun.

Building intricate sand castles.

We went to another closeby town, Roccastrada, that has terraces with an amazing view, all the way to the sea in some directions.

Typical street in one of the hill towns.

We ended up having dinner in a quite fancy but really nice restaurant in the middle of nowhere, called "Re Sugo". The kids spent endless time running around in the surrounding fields with all the other kids from the restaurant, and we watched the blue moon rise.

Clara loves the gigantic chunks of the overturned fields - but she can only lift the little ones.

Yesterday we drove down a small path in the woods nearby to a set of waterfalls and pools in the Farma river. We had to hike quite a bit from the parking spot, and thankfully we passed some locals that we could follow down the path.

In the evening we went to see part of a local ball game tournament, a special game that's an early relative of tennis, that is played in the village streets by teams from all the local villages (some have two teams!). It was really cool to see, even though I caught the ball in the face one time.

Driving down to the Farma waterfalls.

The smaller of the waterfalls.