Happy Birthday breakfast for Susan. 50 ahhhhh! As you can see I've taken over the writing of the blog for yesterday and today to give Allan a break. Yes today is my 50th birthday. I can't understand how I can possibly be 50. I certainly don't feel that old and 50 seems so much older than 49!!! But if you have to turn 50 you might as well do it in Florence and Tuscany. Anyway we had another lovely breakfast which included some lovely cakes. They were so light and yummy and as it was my birthday I was allowed to eat what I liked!

Claudio our lovely Florentine taxi driver picked us up and we went to visit Michaelangelo place overlooking Florence for a photo opportunity as there is a wonderful 360 degree view of Florence . From there we drove to airport to pick up our rental cars.

For those who are interested and I'm not we rented an Opel Zafira, diesel. We then headed off for our trip to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana. The first mistake was that we didn't really arrange with Rob the route and what the travel plans were; mainly because the villa was a surprise - well all three booked by Italian born Rena were supposed to be, but the Castelnuovo villa was the only one we truly new nothing about. The lads just thought we would follow them. Well we lost Rob, Rena and Alice at the first roundabout out of airport. Things were a bit stressful for awhile with a different car which was a manual right hand drive (both ours are automatic) and driving on other side of the road. I'm sure poor Kate sitting in the back wished she was some place else. Anyway with the help of the iPad and apple maps and Kate (I don't think we would have made it without her calm influence and her knowledge of the Italian language) we got to Castelnuova and meet up with Rob and Rena again at Torrite, a suburb of Castelnuovo .

We were due to meet Rena's two Roman aunties and their husbands around five, so we drove back into town for groceries and lunch. Returning to Torrite, within spitting distance of the villa, we still took the wrong access road and drove up a no exit mountain road. A call to the villa owner and we turned around and sighted the Villa Bertagni on the way down.

Dieter, the owner was there to meet us with a walking stick having recently had hip surgery and in a dressing gown, a la Hugh Hefner. Dieter is a Berlina who spent 30 years in London as a fashion designer. He purchased Villa Bertagni in a run down state many years before making the move to Tuscany 13 years ago and renovating the Villa. More on Villa Bertagni in a later post.

Rena's relatives arrived from Roma; we had wine and nibbles outside in the fading sun. Later we ate fresh pasta made commercially by Rena's cousin in Rome and celebrated Susan's 50th with a cake from Castelnuovo and a bottle duty free Moët.