Villa Il Paradisino

We arrived in Florence after running through a couple airports (Charlotte and Munich) to be greeted by Mama and Daddy at the airport. After some wrong turns, we arrived at our home for the next ten days- Villa Il Paradisino.

Mama and Daddy had been making themselves at home for about a week before our arrival, and Mama was pleased as punch to show me around.  Since I had been breathing airplane air for about 12 hours, I was delighted to frolic around the Italian fields, although I was dragging quite a bit. Don't let me forget to tell you about the rowdy group of 75 year olds that partied the entire flight from Charlotte to Munich.  Those golden oldies were the recipients of a number of evil looks from myself and Hubs. 

While I frolicked, Hubs sat on the terrace, unpacked and checked in e-mail

Although I missed Buddy horribly, Nina, my Italian dog friend who loves bites of frittata and plastic bottles, was on hand to entertain.

The villa was the perfect mix of city and country for this crew of East Tennesseans.  Set in a suburb of Florence (a ten minute train ride into downtown), we were in a walled enclave of seven acres of grapevines, olive trees, vegetable gardens, chicken, geese and guinea hens.

The flowers were incredible.  As were the (untrimmed) forsythia.

I loved wandering through the fields identifying the Italian cousins of out gardens back home.  This one took me a while- I was entranced by the colors, and poked around a bit to discover what in the hell it was. . . any guesses?