A busy day with a short ride in the middle.

Pretty super busy day today.  Up to meet the person who organized the tours for the shop to drive with her on a new standard tour.  A beautiful villa / palazzo just outside of San Casciano that offers wine tastings, tours, and a light lunch.  Sounds perfect for the clients, even if it is a little harder getting there.  Add a principe still living in the palazzo and you have what we think is the American tourists dream.  I really like the tour we have done in the past, and the person at Monteoriolo is simply wonderful as a hostess and cook.  But, Marika, the person at the shop, believes that they loose 2/3 of the possible clients by not having a "wine tasting".  I assume she is right, and the new location is very nice, but the people who have gone on the tours in the past have loved Eleonora at Monteoriolo.

A couple of hours at home, then off to a meeting with a commercialista, to review what we need to do to become official residents here.  It appears to us both that it is working well enough here that we will stay for a while, so, we need to get more official.  The joys of more Italian bureaucracy await us.  We will have to pay taxes, but nothing seems onerous.  And after we get all this done we can become part of the public health system, which was recently rated #2 in the world.  The money saved on being part of the health system will probably offset all the taxes paid, but we shall see.

In between meetings, I snuck out for a wonderful ride to the north close to town and the apartment.  It is one of my standard short rides, but I love it.  Today was simply the best weather of the year, and I would guess the high was around 65F.  The prediction for tomorrow is a high of 45 with a fair amount of rain, so I am glad I got out.  23.7 kilometers in 1:07 to average 21.1 kph with 489 meters of climbing.   Oh, and the Banff film festival movie is here tonight, so I will feel a little like my old Crested Butte self when we go tonight.  Ciao a tutti!

A view back toward the Arno valley from the road to Cercina.

Easily the warmest day of the year, but 20F coolie and rain predicted tomorrow.

I am so lucky to have such a beautiful road and place to ride less

than one hour from the apartment.  Just another beautiful cycling road

here in Tuscany, on a quick one hour ride.