Our Italy rental

We arrived at our rental in Montepulciano without any problem. We followed our TOMTOM until we arrived at Montepulciano and then we followed the directions that we had received from the rental. We didn't want the TOMTOM to make us go through the middle of town since it can be difficult to navigate the small, hilly, windy streets. My favorite part of the directions that we received from the owners was, "turn left ignoring the sign that forbids it". I was excited to be staying in Montepulciano. There is something magical to me about driving through the old city wall gate. Everytime we wanted to explore the countryside we had to go in/out of the gate. This is the gate we drove through. As you can see there is no longer an actual gate but it is cool to drive through the wall. No big cars here that is for sure! We followed the directions and came to our rental. I rang the buzzer and the owners opened the gates and came out to greet us. The owners were very friendly and greeted us warmly. I had a high opinion of them before we met b/c Jason and I had booked with them for our planned trip in 2005. As many of you know hat trip was canceled because I became pregnant with Ali. When I called to cancel our reservation the owners were incredibly nice. They didn't charge me anything for canceling and wish me well on our increasing family. When I emailed them to book this trip they immediately responded that they were happy to hear from me again and looked forward to meeting all of us including the new baby! Who would have thought they would remember after 2 years! I know they probably had it in a computer but it was still a really nice personal touch. Anyway, after saying hi we started to get the kids and bags out of the car. Georgio reached for Sofia to help her out of the car. Jason and /i saw him reaching for her and we held our breath. Sofia can be shy with new people but particularly with men so we were afraid she would flip out. We don't know what it is about certain men but some of them she just loves and you would never know that she could be shy. Georgio was one of those men. She loved him! She went right to him and started chatting away with him. She was just as welcoming with Margherita. It was a nice way to start our week in Montepulciano. We walked through the yard to the apartment. It was nice to be able to walk through a yard since we don't have one in Prague. The yard was on three levels. The flat area you see, above that low wall is another long flat expanse of grass and then on the left is their garden and beyond that the yard slopes done again to another flat expanse of grass. The shrubs on top of that low wall is rosemary. It was wonderful to smell.

The apartment was beautiful. The floors were all terracotta. The apartment was decorated as though it was someone's home which was nice. The kids were excited to check out the apartment. Sofia and Ali had separate bedrooms and Ali had a small baby cot to sleep in. It was nice for her to have that b/c it was small enough that she could easily climb out but had sides so she would fall out of bed. The apartment had three bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room and kitchen. The kitchen was downstairs and everything else was upstairs. I'm not sure what floors these would be called since the kitchen walked out to the backyard and the main living space was above the door on the front of the house. We also had access to a washer and a dryer! It was excited to be able to dry my clothes in a dryer. I love clothes that are fresh out of the dryer. Here are some pics of the the inside.