"Tuscany and its hidden trea ..." a Tuscany Travel Page by Thomasbroce

We eventually decided on our trip to Italy (4 weeks), taking in Venice, Tuscany and Scilly.

We booked our hotels in Venice in advance and decided to "look around" for the rest of our stay.

Venice was truely magnificant - wet - but still the majestic spledour shone through.

Then off to Tuscany. Florence of course was a must and we spent 3 days seeing museums, galleries etc and the famous pharmacy of St Novello.

Then we looked to the Arezzo region and COrtona where we found this fantastic new Inn - or as they call it B&B. It is an old farmhouse beautifully restored and, boy have these guys put some effort into getting it right. Casa Portagioia - the gateway to hapiness! or www.tuscanbreaks.com

They have 5 guest bedrooms - all independent along with a couple of apartments. We took an apartment and a double bedroom. Italy is famous for its coffee - but try getting a drip coffee - well they catered for that, there was a machine in the apartment along with all the things (some people) might need for their vacation.

In our room we had a four-poster bed and a huge bathroom - very romantic and appropriate as it was our 10th wedding anniversary.

Helen and Jim had a guest bedroom which even had air-conditioning - we didn't find that in Florence!

We had a good breakfast and the lunches were more than a feast.

The really helpful thing was being able to communicate in English and our hosts were able to send us to places off the beaten tourist track and even those that are well trodden, they gave us a few extra tips - like the Roman sewers in Siena - not everyone gets to see this magnificent achievement.

Anyway, we had a great time and what was suppossed to be a 3 day stay turned out to be a week.

Then, we ditched the car at AVIS in Arezzo and took the new fast train to Rome (1 hour 20 minutes!) where we spent 2 nights before going to Naples and a ferry onto Scilly, but more of that later