Vino in my veins

All it takes is one day here. Or maybe an hour. Or a minute. And you’re carried away. There is vino in your veins and the sun on your face and you’re picking fresh apricots from the trees. And you are here. And nowhere else. In beautiful Tuscany, Italy. Here we are. My husband and me. In Chianti, Toscano at Borgo Argenina, a beautiful bed and breakfast run by Elena Nappa for more than 15 years. But it’s so much more than that. A flower petal falling on your bed in the morning. Fresh breeze that makes you feel like you’re at summer camp. Your feet on the rocks and the dogs leading your way to breakfast: a freshly-baked cake every morning.

Elena had a dream many years ago. She left the fashion industry in Milan to show the world Tuscany.

She’ll cook with you. Show you how to fry eggplant in olive oil for the lasagna, because even though it is hard, it’s “worth it.” She’ll show you how to lay the lasagna pasta. She’ll show you how to make tiramisu from scratch and she’ll make you lick the bowl. She’ll make sure there’s vino in your veins. And the sun on your face. The Tuscan sun. There is nothing in the world like it.

We came here tired. Tired is an understatement, actually. We had just flown from Paris, through Austria. Paris was the first stop on our honeymoon. We were there for almost a week, and my, what a week that was! Between the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and crepes and Francais we barely had time to breathe. But it was wonderful. Beautiful. I ate so much bread. So many pastries. And we saw what seemed like the world.

Exhausted and hungry we came to Borgo Argenina. The very first things Elena showed us was how to pick apricots from the trees, and her map she created, of all the wonderful and beautiful places to go and things to see while in Toscano: castles, restaurants, little towns, big towns. As she handed me apricots fresh from the trees, and spoke to me in Italian, I kept eating them. Not caring if they were dirty. I just kept putting these amazing, fresh, juicy apricots in my mouth. And I knew we were in Tuscany.