Stopping for lunch, I ordered a glass of the house wine. A bottle arrived at the table. When I protested, I was told to drink what I wanted and I would be charged accordingly. Not a bad system, I thought.

Later, sipping more wine – this is Italy, after all — on our apartment balcony overlooking the vineyards from whose grapes it was made, we debated whether to eat in or go out for another Florentine steak. The fact that our apartment was housed in a structure dating back to the 13th century on a farm boasting one of the best-known vineyards in Italy was a bonus.

Vineyard photograph courtesy of Victor Block.

Welcome to UNTOURS, a wonderful well-kept secret that may change your concept of travel forever. Idyll, Ltd.’s UNTOURS program offers tourists a unique opportunity to not be tourists. It flies participants to one or more cities in more than a dozen European countries, inundates them with information and puts them up in apartments for two-to-four or more weeks to live like the locals. A much safer option during the pandemic than staying at a hotel.

It’s a way to get to know a destination in a manner that would never happen on a conventional tour. And again — a safer one. It’s ideal for those who have the time and interest to explore their surroundings at leisure and in depth. And they provide the wherewithal to do it: rental cars or bus and rail passes are part of the package.

Those who joined my husband, Victor, and me on the pre-pandemic Southern Tuscany adventure were intrepid travelers who wanted to focus on the destination, not the details. Cathy Gerdes, a veteran Untourist from Durham, NC explained: “We love the philosophy of Untours. They help you make all the arrangements, give you the inside scoop on what to do, and then leave you on your own to explore and discover.” We were learning about our neighborhood, but on our terms. Rise early or sleep in. Sightsee or stroll around town. Cook in or eat out. And whatever the choice, we returned to our apartment, a much roomier and warmer ambiance than any hotel would provide, and one which has been treated according to strict Covid protocols.

The town of steps, turns and back alleys that initially seemed daunting to navigate soon became negotiable. We mastered shortcuts to the center of town; got to know local vendors, and began to feel secure enough to risk getting lost on purpose. The sense of pride I felt when giving some harried American tourists directions was bordering on smug.

Street photograph courtesy of Victor Block.

Each day brought a new adventure, often beginning with a visit to any one of several nearby “hill towns,” which indeed come by their name honestly. One day, it was the Renaissance city of Pienza, known for its harmony of ambience and structure, a town the word charming was invented for. Another day, San Gimignano, claiming more intact towers than any other hill town – 13, 14 or 15, depending upon the not-so-reliable source material. Or tiny Murlo, town of 17, which more resembled a movie set of a 13th century village than the reality of it. And then there was historic Volterra, flaunting evidence of Etruscan, Roman, Medieval and Renaissance influences.

Muro photograph courtesy of Victor Block.

A visit to Abbadia San Salvatore introduced us to an 8th century Abbey whose write-up talks about it being newly renovated. Those recent restorations? They took place in the 15th century. This sense of time warp is ever present. The present and past — long-ago past — coexist harmoniously as one can travel back and forth through multiple centuries within a couple of hours of doing day-to-day errands.

Whatever the village, be sure to walk off the main square to see where the people really live. Perusing 13th-century corridors an arms-length wide, flanked on both sides by two-to-three story stone apartments, we eavesdropped on venues teeming with life. The back streets appear even more historic and colorful than the already enthralling but more touristy central piazza. Admittedly, the local folks are probably not as impressed as I am at the origin of their lifestyles.

Every town has its church dating from the 1200s, museum celebrating its art, its de rigueur duomo, fortress and possibly Etruscan tomb. I rarely went into any of them. I’m not proud of this, and I don’t recommend it. I’m a travel writer after all, and this is sacrilege, but for me, the wonder of traveling is to be found wandering the streets, and in Tuscany especially, stopping at every café for a Cappuccino or scoop of gelato.

Gelato photograph courtesy of Victor Block.

Check out the wide, heavy wooden apartment doors with their ornate designs and fanciful brass knockers — to me, almost as appealing as the many works of art within the cathedrals and museums. Look through ubiquitous archways overlooking the red tile roofs of the towns below for yet another photo op demanding to be taken.

Driving through the Tuscan countryside, almost every bend produces another WOW moment — perhaps not the more dramatic views of, say, a New Zealand, but instead a more tranquil beauty. Picture this: an incredibly vast expanse of rolling hills, a patchwork quilt of vineyards, olive trees and wheat fields dipping into valleys and clinging to hillsides, with colors of green and brown and reddish gold depending upon the season and the crop, accentuated by stately, slender Cypress trees standing guard along long driveways leading up to stone villas.

Cypress trees photograph courtesy of Victor Block.

Looking out across the valleys, you recognize there’s something different about the light – it seems richer, more intense. A young artist we met who was painting her way through Tuscany characterized it as “luminescent.” Ah yes, I thought, that’s it.

Countryside photograph courtesy of Victor Block.

Grant & Patricia Wood from Mississauga, Canada, on their third Southern Tuscany trip reinforced the concept: “We fell in love with the simplicity, the community, the people, the views, the light. We left our hearts here so we had to come back. It feels like we’ve come home.”

Though Vic’s eyes were beginning to glaze over at the thought of another Medieval town, I was still entranced by the narrow streets, steep hills and back alleys. Yet we broke up our days with hiking in nearby national parks, meandering through local outdoor markets, checking out a Cock Festival that had been held in a close-by hamlet for over 700 years and doing errands such as laundry, email and shopping for quiet dinners at home.

But mostly we dined on pasta, cheeses and pizzas at the many tavernas in our neighborhood, every table sporting the ubiquitous bottle of wine. Even at lunch! Not a usual practice back home. One of our favorite hangouts was Taverna dei Barbi, an old stone tavern on the grounds of the vineyard where we lived. Sitting among the eerie granite-covered archways and columns, I felt like I was in a very sophisticated, warm, welcoming…dungeon.

Offered a menu in English or Italian, I so wished I could have said “Italiano, per favore” and meant it. But I had only learned just enough Italian to get into trouble. I could ask some basic questions but didn’t have a prayer of understanding the answers. Still, it found us “il banyo” (bathroom) and “la stazione” (train station) and, of course, a multitude of gelato flavors.

The Taverna’s sausages and salami come from their resident pigs; the cheeses from their sheep; the veggies from the garden and, of course, the wine from their vineyards. Most restaurants at home are not quite that self-sustaining. I was glad I hadn’t taken a tour earlier and gotten to know any of the local inhabitants by name.

Our days were filled with a meshing of hills and happenstance, vistas and vino, walled cities and watch towers; a chance meeting at a museum, church, fortress or, better yet, a wine tasting. After all, this is what Tuscany is famous for, and wine bars are as omnipresent on street corners here as Starbucks are in the States.

Perhaps, that’s the essence of the UNTOURS experience. There’s something more special about discovering such treasures on your own than being herded there as part of a group, according to a pre-determined time schedule that dictates how long you can spend looking before it hurries you through because the bus is leaving to go to the next stop.

Wine and cheese photograph courtesy of Victor Block.

It was so much nicer just to pick up some roasted chicken, wave to shopkeepers we had befriended and return home to sit on our porch, sip yet another glass of wine and savor our most recent exploits. For more information, contact UNTOURS at 888-868-6871 or visit their website at www.untours.com. Now that the EU has opened up travel to visitors from the States, UNTOURS expects their trips to start again, hopefully, very soon.

The post Sipping Vino and Savoring Vistas in Tuscany appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Welcome to UNTOURS, a wonderful well-kept secret that may change your concept of travel forever.  The program offers tourists a unique opportunity to not be tourists. Serving more than two dozen European countries, Untours inundates you with information, puts you up in unusual accommodations, provides whatever transportation is necessary to get around and voila! You are a local. (Yes, that works as well in Italian as it does in French…)

We were learning about our neighborhood, but on our terms. Rise early or sleep in. Sightsee or stroll around town. Cook in or eat out. And whatever the choice, we returned to our apartment, a much roomier and warmer ambiance than any hotel would provide. The orientation told us where to get the best produce, meat, fish, pastries, and of course, wine and gelato, the afore-mentioned shop which just coincidentally was directly next door to our apartment.

Our favorite local discovery? The Filler-Up Wine Shop. Bring in any empty bottle and fill it with the wine of your choice for $2.50-$4.00 a bottle – less than you would pay for a glass at a local trattoria. What a terrific way to recycle empty water bottles!

We stayed at a small but cozy 2-story apartment with a full kitchen, lovely balcony and wood-beam ceilings. First it just felt homey – then it was home.  The fact that it was built in the 1700’s was just a bonus. The building across the alley was so close I could reach across the balcony guard rail and tap on their window.

But then everything in Venice is in tight quarters. Venice is an old city – it looks old – sometimes very old. The water-logged foundations date back to the 11^th century; the newer building facades are as recent as the 15^th.  So many buildings stripped of paint and plaster on both sides of a small alleyway, I expected them to crumble before my eyes until I reminded myself they have looked pretty much the same for over 500 years.

Going from the crowded parking lot area with throngs of cars, buses and vans – the last vestiges of the auto industry I was to see for a week – I was transformed into another world filled instead with canals, gondolas, water buses, cobbled streets, alleyways, bridges and cafes.  Picture everything that makes any city run – buses, taxis, fire trucks, police cars, ambulances, postal services, Fedex deliveries, garbage pick-ups – but they’re all boats! And the city still runs.

Expect to get lost. And thank goodness because that is the best way to explore the city and find those gems that are not part of the major tourist itineraries.

Among those gems is Pinocchio Island, home to a local Geppetto whose real name is Roberto Comin, maker of magical marionettes. These brilliant little string creatures represented all aspects of Venetian historical and theatrical culture lovingly produced by Comin for 25 years in a workshop over 350 years old.  Requests now come in for characters from Shakespeare to Cleopatra and yes, a Johnny Depp look-alike that was given to the actor for his birthday. The costumes rival the intricacy and elegance of any Medici gown or regal accessory. Want a marionette dopple-ganger of yourself?  It’s doable but it’ll cost you about $600.

Another unusual find, especially surprising in such a Catholic city, home to well over 100 churches, is a small square that is actually referred to as Ghetto Campo de Nova where there are five synagogues, several kosher restaurants and residents sporting traditional Jewish skull caps known as yarmulkes. The kosher menus include antipasto and spaghetti as well as bagels and potato latkes. Talk about an ecumenical meal! With a little imagination, and a lot of Manischewitz wine, you could be in Israel!

Getting lost is a given – did I mention that?  People spend as much time looking up at the signs designating different sections, squares and churches of the city as they do looking down at maps, phones and GPS’s. My favorite response from a young street vendor: “Go right, over the next bridge, then ask someone else.” And then when you don’t think things can get any worse, you see the sign you’ve been searching for and it points in both directions. I thought about giving up and going home but I had no clue how to get there.

We wandered everywhere, sitting at cafes to eat or drink wine, always aware of how little English we heard – again reinforcing the idea of living like a local. And the more we wandered, the more enjoyable the discoveries: a delightful mask store, street musicians in jeans playing Vivaldi, an out-of-the-way Leonardo DaVinci Museum.

Not every stop in Venice is off-the-beaten-path. There’s  the de rigueur visit to Piazza San Marco, a World Heritage site and symbol of Venice. Like the Spanish Steps in Rome and the Uffizi in Florence, it’s the symbol of the city. So if you want to avoid tourists, don’t go there – especially not on a weekend. But part of the reason they’re there are the pigeons. Now in my unfiltered 19-year-old memory, the square was covered with them. Decades later, my first thought was, “Where are all the pigeons?” Then I saw them. “Oh yes, over there by that guy with all the bird food.”

As we took the vaporetto to the island of Murano, we left the canals behind and felt the freedom of open waters as we entered the lagoon surrounding the city. Murano, world famous for its glass figurines, jewelry and home décor since the 11^th Century, is a must destination if  you want to be absolutely sure you’re buying Murano glass  and not a knock-off. A visit to the factory offers insight into how the glass is made, the colors created, the intricacies of the designs and the skills of the master glass blowers. Makes you better appreciate the high prices you then encounter in the gift shops…sort of….

I was amazed at the intricate convoluted shapes in colors so vibrant and translucent that the light passing through intensifies the whole experience. I wanted to decorate my whole house with cups, vases, dishes and elaborately designed decorative pieces but I settled for a pair of earrings.

As we exited another vaporetto at Lido, the beachfront community, we were transported to another era. That of a modern beach town hawking flip flops, beach toys and sunglasses. And then I saw a bus! One with actual wheels. Dorothy, you’re not in Venice anymore!

Wide sand beach with crowded umbrellas and chaise lounges on one side and isolated blankets on the other. Large elegant hotels front the tree-laden boulevards with greenery everywhere, a color sorely lacking in the squares and alleyways of Venice.  It was a fun diversion but I was so happy to get back home, pick up some Branzini from the fish market in Santa Margherita Square plus a water bottle full of wine from the Filler-Up shop, and dine out on our balcony.

Perhaps, that’s the essence of the Untours experience. There’s something more special about discovering such treasures on your own than being herded there as part of a group, according to a pre-determined time schedule that dictates how long you can spend looking before it hurries you through because the bus – in this case, one on water – is leaving to go to the next stop.

It was so much nicer just to pick up some fresh fish, wave to shopkeepers we had befriended and return home to sit on our porch, sip yet another glass of wine and savor our most recent exploits. And feel reassured that no one has ever been irretrievably lost in Venice, but if so – how lucky for them. They’re still there!

For more information, visit www.untours.com.

The post Exploring Venice: Lost and Found. And Special Finds. Repeat. appeared first on Traveling Archive.