Lost under the Tuscan sun...and moon!

May 1st-I'm not even sure where to start with this post because we were literally all over the place today. I guess I should start with we rented a car from Hertz and decided to drive to some of the small Tuscan hill towns. This was our first time to have a car during our trip. Well, let me first start with the car...it was a small (very small) FIAT. It worked though. Amy was crammed in the middle of the back seat and the kids were on both sides of her. Brent started off driving because I (Mike) wasn't that comfortable with a standard, therefore; wasn't comfortable driving out of Florence. Brent did a great job driving us out of town and I did the job of navigating us. We got on the A1 which is the main interstate that heads south between Florence and Rome. We had decided that we were going to take the A1 to Montepulciano and then travel through some of the small hill towns, stopping at various ones along the way until we reached Montalcino. Well, as we exited the A1, and entered the windy Tuscan roads, we were immediately struck by the beauty of the region. We stopped to take some pictures and I decided to test my standard driving skills. We continued for a bit before we started entering Montepulciano. Almost immediately, we started noticing cars parked on the side of the road. After a little bit the traffic started getting heavy. We then came upon a huge town fair / carnival area. Today was Labor Day in Italy, and by the looks of it, we had wandered into a large regional festival. We initially had thoughts of going to the festival until the traffic became overwhelming. It took us over 30 minutes to go a mile or so to get through the town. No where along the way was their parking and once through the traffic, we decided we didn't want to park on the side of the road and walk a couple of miles back to the festival. We decided that we would skip over the town and head to our next village. We headed out of town and started trying to navigate to the next village. After a couple of traffic circles and turns, we realized we were heading right back into Montepulciano and the traffic. We convinced ourselves that there would be a road around the village as we drove, but upon hitting the traffic again, realized this was not the case. I did a u-turn in the road and headed back away from the crazy traffic. I should have mentioned that from the moment we left Florence at 9am, Brent was talking about how hungry he was. I had told him that we would grab something in Montepulciano because we would be there in about an hour. It was now almost 12:30 and he still hadn't had anything to eat. So we came upon what looked like a house on the side of the road that said "ristorante" and decided to head in. It turned out to be a local winery that had a restaurant and small hotel. It was great food and perfect Tuscan ambiance. Once there, we asked the waiter for directions. He pulled out a more detailed map of the area and marked the key roads we should take. Unfortunately, we would have to go through Montepulciano to get to the other towns. I guess a full stomach gave us some confidence that we could navigate thru the area without getting caught in the traffic. We headed into Montepulciano only to hit traffic again. Since it was such a beautiful day, we just rolled down the windows and enjoyed the sights. Once we finally made it into the town, the police had a road block that detoured us into the narrow streets of the town. At this point, we were literally squeezing between cars and people, trying to find our way out of town. At one point, we were the only car driving in an area filled with people and market booths. We came to a dead end on a street and had to turn around. Unfortunately, it was back up a very steep hill. As mentioned before, my standard driving skills are not that greatest and so at one point, I got stopped on the hill and could not get going. After about 3 times of stalling out (and the car behind us honking & the smell of burning clutch), I hopped out and traded places with Brent for him to drive. He got us up the hill but then promptly got us trapped again on a dead end street. However, this one did not have enough room to turn around. He backed down the street until he thought he had enough room to turn around. It turns out that while I can't get up a hill, Brent can't turn a car in a tight location. We were going back and forth, back and forth trying to turn with minimal success. He finally tried to back into a driveway only to drop the car off a small ledge and drag/scrape the front end. Finally he got into the driveway enough to turn the car around. We then found a main road and headed out of the city thinking we had finally made our way through. At the next road circle, we looked at the signs only to realize we had somehow gone back the same way we came in. We were dying laughing about how this town had sucked us in, spun us around and then spit us out. So at this point, we decided to go a long way out of our way back to the interstate and make a big circle around Montepulciano to get to the towns on the other side. While it turned out to be a big detour, we were rewarded on the other side. The drive between the small hill towns on our way to Montalcino was beautiful and very scenic. We stopped in one small town of Chianciano for gelato. From here, Brent and I had had our fair share of driving so Amy took over. She successfully got us to Montalcino about 4pm. The town had a huge castle that sat on a hill overlooking the valley. They were having some type of labor day festival with a live band playing. We bought a bottle of wine and sat at a table enjoying the beautiful day and music. The kids were able to run around and play so it was a great time for all. After a few hours, we headed back for Florence. We took the "back" roads up through Siena towards Florence. It was another great drive, enjoying the scenery at dusk. As we began to enter Florence, we realized that we had directions out of the city, but not back to the apartment. However, we were confident that we could make it back with no problem. As it turns out, I think we made a key mistake. I (Mike) was driving with Brent navigating. Given, this was his first time in the city, we should have reversed that and let me navigate. So, we quickly found ourselves lost coming into Florence. Luckily, we somehow ended up in Plazza Michelangelo which is an area up on a hill that overlooks Florence. We got out of the car and took some pics of Florence at night. We then got back in the car with our goal to get across the river to our apartment. We thought it couldn't be that difficult. Well after about 30 minutes of driving and not crossing the river (and actually somehow ending up at Plazza Michelangelo a second time) we were getting pretty exhausted. Just as we were about to go try to find someone that could direct us, we found a bridge across the river. At this point, we were close to the apartment. We still had to navigate through horrible traffic to get to the apartment and circle a few times because of one way streets, but finally made it back a little after 10pm. We were exhausted from driving and glad to be out of the car. Amy actually had a friend (Tina Young) and her husband in town that we were meeting for drinks. So we left the kids with Brent (was that smart?) and took off walking to meet them. It turned out great as we sat at a table on Plazza Signoria and enjoyed catching up with them and hearing about their Italy vacation. This was our first night out together without the kids and it was great to be able to have a "grown-up" conversation! We finally left them and headed back to our apartment. It was a long, but enjoyable day in Tuscany.