Ok, back home now and writing these retroactively.

So far our trip had consisted of going from city to city — Rome to Florence. The third part of the trip involved more a region than a specific city: Friuli-Venezia Giulia. It’s up in the northeast corner of Italy, bordered on the north by the Alps and despite it’s name, does not include the city of Venice in the south.

It is truly gorgeous country. It’s also where Travis was stationed for two years in the Air Force, so this part of the trip was less about seeing museums and ancient things and more about seeing living things: the base where he had lived, the town in which he had lived, and the people with whom he was still friends. We knew there’d be a lot of driving for this area, so  we rented a car in Florence and drove three hours north to our next “base camp:” an agiturismo in Vittorio Venetio. (More on an agiturismo in a bit.)

The drive itself was uneventful. Getting out of Florence was a bit of an adventure, but not too hard thanks to Travis’s expert driving. Driving in a major Italian city is not for the faint of heart or those lacking quick reflexes. Once we got on the highway (autostrada in Italian) we were off.

Tunnels:

Roads:

Eventually mountains and vineyards:

And then we were off the paved road and on to a gravel road lined with more vineyards. 

Turns out that we had booked a place in prosecco country. We love prosecco. This was a happy accident. 😛 Prosecco grapes were not the only kind of grapes grown here, but they were the main kind.

Our agiturismo was off of this gravel road.

So what’s an agiturismo? It’s a farm that also hosts guests. It’s like a bed and breakfast except it’s rarely breakfast that’s served and more like dinner. Sometimes. It depends on where you stay. The overall term comes from the combination of the words for farm and tourism in Italian, and means farm holiday. Some places are quite fancy, some places let you work on the farm, others act more as hotels/motels. Ours was this latter kind, and we’d arrived during the harvest season so the owners were quite busy, but not so busy that they didn’t greet us, introduce themselves and their kids, introduce the dog, and give us a bottle of prosecco.

Agiturismos in general are pretty cool. We don’t have this concept in the US and it’d be interesting to see it tried here. If you’re looking for something other than a main city to visit, I’d highly recommend checking out this option. It’s usually beautiful country too. Take, for example, the view out of one of our windows. Breathtaking.

And vineyards everywhere.

One note: Be aware that these agiturismos can either have all the amenities you could ask for and more, or not. Make sure you know exactly what you’re getting. Ours, for example, lacked heat. And internet. And cell phone coverage — none of which we had expected. And what it lacked in those areas, it made up for in mosquitoes, flies, and very large spiders. (It is a farm, after all. You will see nature.) We visited at the tail end of the summer, so the lack of heat wasn’t a significant issue. It did get chilly at night, however, and had we visited later this would’ve been a problem. The internet/cell coverage was more of a hangup. We had deliberately not planned any part of this trip beyond the cities we’d visit, because we wanted to be free to make it up as we went along and not feel tied to any particular schedule. As a result, we relied on a good internet connection a LOT in Rome and Florence to figure out plans for the day, look up sites and maps, etc. (Also for writing blog posts.) This strategy worked really well in those cities, but fell apart a bit here. If we stood in one spot in one room, we could usually get enough of a signal to, say, check email or Facebook, but anything more required a trip into town.

And that’s another thing to keep in mind: the charm of these agiturismos is that they are remote, but that also means that you’re not close to anything. If we needed to get to the grocery, find some coffee or tea, or just get a good cell phone signal, it was a solid 20-30 minute drive into town.

As long as you keep all of those things in mind and walk in prepared, you will LOVE staying at an agiturismo. They’re well worth checking out and the hospitality is fantastic.

Ok back to pictures.

Once we got settled in, we hopped back in the car and drove over to Sacile, where Travis lived while he was stationed in Italy.

Sacile is a small town with lots of shops and a few restaurants. We walked around for a bit and Travis showed me some of his favorite places. It’s a very pretty town and a nice change of pace from the size and energy of Rome and Florence.

We headed over to a pizza place near where Travis used to live and ordered two pizzas and a quarter liter of wine, enough for one glass for each of us. Mine had prosciutto on it, and it was amazing. And our final bill for two 15″ pizzas, a liter of water, and the wine? 17 euro, or about $22. We couldn’t eat like that in the US for that amount of money for sure. So good. And good prosciutto, too.