The perfect TUSCANY road trip (All the costs and where to stay)

Welcome to 72 hours in arguably the most beautiful part of Italy, Tuscany. This is the third video of our Italian series. If you missed the previous videos, we explored the ancient city of Rome and drove the incredibly beautiful Amalfi coast. Today we're driving a cute little Fiat 500 through the rolling hills of Tuscany, a province in central Italy known for its vineyards, wine tasting, wall cities and of course the beautiful capital city of Florence. We have got our trusty little steed for our road trip here in Italy and it is the iconic, the one and only Fiat 500. It's been a bucket list item for the both of us to rent a Fiat 500 in Italy and we're doing it. I'm just so excited for this. We come from South Africa and we're used to driving on the opposite side of the car and the opposite side of the road. So it's a little trickier. Obviously the roads here in Italy are so small. They are so small but luckily this car is really small too. Guys, it's so cute. And it's very fancy. It's got Apple CarPlay, air conditioning, everything you could need for a comfortable drive across Italy. Roughly an hour outside of Sorrento is Naples. Naples is the birthplace of pizza and the very first pizza restaurant is still there. So feel free to make a stop there if you want and try one of the OG pizzas. We'll put the link to that pizza restaurant in our resource pack. So if you are looking for all the best spots in the whole of Italy then head down to the description and grab our Italy resource pack. We also include over 20 accommodation options in there for all budget types, our Google Map links there and a whole bunch more to help you plan your trip here to Italy. And just before Naples actually is Pompeii which is a city that was completely buried alive by a Mount Vesuvius eruption. So you can go and visit the museum there as well. There is just so much to do in Italy. We can't do everything. We're doing so much already so we're heading straight to Tuscany. First stop here at I think it's called Q8. Got everything in there that your heart desires. We picked up some almond cappuccinos which are absolutely delicious and these buffalo sandwiches which is mozzarella, some cheese and meat. Fantastic. Total was 21 euros so a little bit pricey for us as South Africans. Maybe that's the norm in Europe. Yeah off we go. What are your thoughts on Tuscany so far? Exactly how I pictured it in my mind. It's so beautiful. This shot right now is a pain. Are we staying here? I cannot. I can't believe this is what I booked. This has never happened before where the place you booked super exceeds your expectations. Well the scenery outside does so far that's for sure. Oh yeah I don't actually care but like I could sleep on a wooden plank right now. I do not care. The views. I cannot even tell you guys how beautiful it is right now. Google translate guys. Download onto your phone. Yeah it's super handy especially when you go off the beaten track and you're out of the big cities. Nobody speaks English. I thought we were double booked guys. I really thought we didn't have a room tonight. We arrived and she was so confused. I think we're in the right place. Hello. Buonasera. Buonasera. My name is Rhett. Luciano. Nice to meet you. You bring milk? Cake? Italian coffee. Oh yes very good. Okay yeah thank you. Wow amazing. I'd like this passport check-in. Yeah you need a passport? Yes. We are checked in. Our host finally came and brought us in and he even brought us cakes and milk and yogurt and Italian coffee to make us stay comfortable and I think that was his mom that greeted us and she just comes here to farm on the land. She absolutely loves it here. Couldn't speak a word of English and I love it guys. Nobody is under obligation to speak English. I absolutely love communicating through touch and words and translating. It was stressful at first because she's like no no no. I think she was like try to tell her she doesn't know where we are or what. It was kind of stressful in the beginning but it was such a lovely moment. It just reminds you that you're really in the middle of Italy right now. It just cannot get more Italian than this. It is a literal dream. I don't know about you guys but Rhett and I have really been craving nature. The middle of nowhere, the sound of birds and trees and just zero construction like zero traffic noise. It does not get better than this for real. You may be wondering why exactly I booked this stay and this specific area and that's because I came across a blog post, a CNN travel blog post and it said that Val d'Orcia is the most photographed place and most beautiful destination in the whole of Italy and I found this B&B right near Val d'Or, well in Val d'Orcia and right near one of the most beautiful streets or roads in the whole of Italy. Well done. I'm pretty proud of this one. We just got back from the little mart like two kilometers away. We bought a full bag of groceries with like stuff for four, five, six meals and it was only 30 euro including this bottle of wine that was only 1 euro 70 for the entire bottle. How insane. You would think being in Tuscany would be super expensive. It really is not and in fact I just cooked up a nice chicken stew because Reti's still feeling sick so that's just comfort food right there. It's a lot cooler here in Tuscany as well so some wine, some stew, maybe a cup of tea later and some of the sweets that they gave It's gonna be a good evening. This is really, really something we needed. Good morning. I literally cannot even explain to you guys how in love we are with Tuscany. How unbelievable this landscape is and how much we love our Airbnb that we're staying in but today we're on our way to do some wine tasting obviously because that's what Tuscany is really known for so I think we're gonna visit one or two wineries today and just explore the region in our Fiat. It's just such a vibe, oh my word, so many farms and also so many little castle looking villages on each hill so let's see what we get up to. We have no plan and I think I really like that we have no plan. The plan is to just take it easy and see what we see We mainly produce Sangiovese to make Brunello. We produce Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot too to make our super Tuscan style wine but the most important wine is Brunello di Montalcino. Clary is not feeling very well today. She's got a cough. I think I made her sick guys. The public transport I think is to blame here in Europe. Sick people everywhere on the trains and apparently there's this thing called the Euro cough and all foreigners pretty much get it every time they come to Europe and I think we've got it. The worst sickness I've ever had. Horrible. Well we have just been roaming around all over the hills of Tuscany. We've visited a couple of different villages and towns. We've gone to Pienza. We've done some wine tasting and really we've just been visiting like all the viewpoints in the whole of this region but I think the area that we're staying in Val d'Orcia is by far the most beautiful area in my personal opinion but not only in my personal opinion in the big filmmakers opinions as well. Why? Because there have been some really famous films actually filmed in Val d'Orcia. Familiar? The year is 2000. Russell Crowe. A little film called The Gladiator. Well this is the set for one of the scenes and I must say directors definitely chose an incredibly beautiful part of Tuscany and I'm so happy that we are staying literally just 10 minutes from here. How amazing. I cannot believe how many men they are nerding out right now. Literally Rhett and all these other guys are here doing the exact pose. I think about the Roman Empire on a daily basis. This car has been an absolute game changer when it comes to exploring the region of Tuscany and if you're wondering how we booked it well we booked it on a website called discovercars.com and it has to be our new favorite way of booking car rentals on our travels all around the world. Discovercars is essentially booking.com for car rental and their whole purpose is to make the car rental process as easy and quick as possible in over 145 countries worldwide. All the big brands that you know like Hertz, Avis, Sixt are all on the platform as well as the smaller locally owned businesses like the one we got ours from Insurrento. So you no longer have to go into each individual website to compare pricing and to see what cars are available. It's all done on one platform and that is the Discover Cars website. The platform is incredibly easy to use and they even have an app that you can find cars right on your phone. It took us basically 15 minutes to get our car. We knew we wanted a Fiat 500. We just put in our starting points of Sorrento and our ending points of Florence and a whole bunch of options popped up and we booked it so so quickly. We didn't even have to pay the full amount up front for this little buddy only on collection. So definitely check the link down in the description of this video and use Discover Cars for your next trip. Brut, thank you Discover Cars for making this trip extra special. Let's get back to the video. Although Tuscany does change a little bit we've seen a lot of changes in the landscape as we've been driving around today. It's still incredibly beautiful everywhere so if you stay anywhere in Tuscany I'm sure you'll be more than happy. Okay we're finally home back in our favorite place. This Airbnb honestly it's been one of my favorite stays we've ever ever ever ever had. Like I'm completely obsessed with it. I've just made myself a mid lemon because I'm feeling quite fluey and Reti's gone on a run in the hills here. I'm sure he's loving every second. This is exactly where I want to be. I don't want to actually be gallivanting and sightseeing. That's not what I wanted out of our Tuscany trip but I have done a lot of research and I know all the top spots in Tuscany. In fact I've linked them all in our Italian Google Maps link that is available in our resource pack. So if you do want to come here to Tuscany and then do all the things and see all the sights then you can purchase our Italy resource pack and yeah all the spots are linked in there. Bye Tuscany. We didn't even get to use the jacuzzi. Jokes we're not leaving Tuscany we're actually just leaving the Tuscany countryside but we're on our way to the capital of Tuscany now which is Florence and my granny and grandpa came vanlifing to Italy and all over Europe actually in like the 70s or 80s and my granny's favorite city absolute favorite city out of all of the destinations they traveled to in Europe was Florence so needless to say we're very very very excited to be visiting it finally. We just stopped at the petrol station and it's a self-help petrol station and we've never done that before. In South Africa we have petrol attendants so people help us put petrol in and Rhett has no idea how to use this machine. I don't think. I just know the car takes 35 liters so I'll stop around there. Okay first click. That's fine. I think we're good. 30 liters yeah. That's fine. This is fun. When you're in your most miserable state that's when somebody will come up to you in the street and be like hey Rhett and Claire love your videos. Like I literally they must have looked at us and been like jeez like Rhett and Claire are miserable people. We've been waiting for the buses here in Italy for half an hour now we've got to walk one and a half kilometers with all this luggage. My tip is just pack light for Italy and do not rely on the public transport at all but thanks for saying hi. Yeah we always love when people come up to us and say hi. How random though in Florence oh my gosh. We don't have a lot of time here in Florence unfortunately we just have the afternoon and the evening but our hotel is really close to a lot of the good sites here. The hotel is on the screen now I think it's called Michele's and yeah it's pretty comfortable. I've booked it on booking.com. It's probably around 130 euros per night. We've just spotted Ghiotto's tower and then there's a lot of sights around that to see so let's just head over there now. Oh this is literally the most beautiful bell tower I've ever seen in my little life and it's huge and there's so many cute restaurants you can eat at right here. This is the Cathedral of Santa Maria and then right across the road is the Baptistery of Saint John. John is my granddad's name. The rest is his granddad I'm thinking of you. Oh and now I'm going to cry. But this whole square, this is so beautiful. I'm going to ruin myself. Florence is actually known as Italy's most beautiful city and there's a couple of really amazing things you can do here. A lot of it is around going to museums and art galleries and that is because some of the world's most famous paintings are here. Number one you can go to the Academy Gallery to see the statue of David. Number two you can go to Fusi Gallery and see the birth of Venus painting in real life. Number three you can just walk around here and just take it all in. That's exactly what we're going to do because it is already so beautiful guys. Hello granny. Do you recognize this behind me? So we went to the gallery, the Academia Gallery to go see the statue of David but the line was literally too long and we just don't have the energy to wait in it and we didn't pre-book. You guys go ahead and book it on Get Your Guide but a little fun fact around the corner there is a replica of the statue of David and there he is right over there and apparently he looks identical as the one inside the museum. A little bit smaller though right? Maybe no I think he's the same size he's an exact replica. So there you go budget to come see the Walmart version of the statue of David. Honestly visit Italy if you want to be transported back 600 years in time because there's virtually no modern buildings around in any of the cities Rome, Florence, Venice. You just feel like you're living in history and it's just it's beautiful. Pretty sure behind me is the Gucci restaurant where you can have this whole dinner experience. A friend of ours has done it. If you're a girl and a lover of fashion, I mean not even a girl, if you're anyone and you're a lover of fashion then you can book yourself a reservation at the Gucci restaurant. Super expensive but I mean I was going to say when in Rome, when in Florence. Obviously there's a lot to do in Florence and it's one of the best cities to just walk around and explore on foot but one thing we had to do before leaving Italy was a cooking class and specifically to learn how to make those legendary pastas like tagliatelle and ravioli and so we found the perfect tour on get your guide for that with the added bonus of learning how to make tiramisu too. So I'm going to start from the egg whites and I will put so most of the recipes they tell you all the sugar in the yolks but my nonna always used to tell me one scoop in the whites as because it helps to glue everything together. So we've already learned the history of tiramisu. It's so fascinating. It's actually known as a pick-me-up dessert and that's because tiramisu means basically pull me out and lift me up and that's literally what it translates to and that's because it's got coffee in and it was often made for people who had night shifts just so that they would have a bit of a pick-me-up. Some of those people included gods and prostitutes. You can also talk positive affirmations to your tiramisu. You are. Oh yeah? Yeah you're a dirty girl. Well I mean you're a good girl but you can also be a dirty girl. Wow that is yum. That's so good. After creating our tiramisu it was time to head to the kitchen in the back to start with the real cooking portion of this cooking class. The first step was to create dough for both our ravioli and tagliatelle. This was super simple as it was just a whole bunch of flour, some egg and some really good kneading. This is the moment I've been waiting for. There you go. For ages is to finally use one of these pasta machines. Intimidating. It's gonna be fun. Okay let's go. You ready? By the way guys this is so much fun. Make a little pancake. Like so. Dip her in. It's always good. Make sure there's flour all over then we add in. I'm going in. That looks good. I did it. It's a lot harder than what it looks like. What the heck. So we're just making our spinach and ricotta cheese filling. Look at him he's so cute. And then we just chuck him right there in the ravioli. I think we've got about six pieces of ravioli. This is not cooking. This is making art. This is architecture. This is so involved. I will never eat a piece of ravioli ever again and not appreciate the craftsmanship that went into making it. It's difficult but it's fun. I'm the proud mama. This tour is bottomless. What is this? Prosciutto. Prosciutto? Prosecco. And now we're getting white wine because it pairs well with the ravioli. It's a lot of alcohol guys and there's no limit whatsoever. We have a beautiful Bianco di Pitigliano. Pitigliano is very close to Siena. It's one of the best wines. It's dry but it's also fruity. Oh that's what we made. Ricotta cheese and spinach stuff. A ravioli cooked in a sage and butter sauce. Guys this is it. This is amazing. This is living. This is living. That is phenomenal. They are pretty yummy. Could do with a little salt but apparently you'll offend him if you ask for salt and pepper in Italy. Attenzione. Can I put the plate here? There we go. Your beautiful tagliatelle. Guys we made that. Do you like guys some parmigiano How's our tagliatelle there? Cooked and made to perfection. Honestly guys we nailed it. We did it. We did it. This is it's all the flavors in the sauce but the flavor is also in the pasta that we all made. So we made with our own beer. We gave it the texture. Yes look at that. Beautiful texture. We finally got our tiramisu's back. And damn did we do a good job making them. Really. Yummy. Look at the eyes. Look at the eyes. Guys listen to me carefully. If you are in Florence and you don't do that cooking class what's wrong with you? That was literally like I'm losing my voice. We had so much fun. It was so good and obviously we booked it on Get Your Guide and we'll link the tour down in the description so you can get the exact same experience as us. Anyway I think we're actually done with Tuscany. Oh no. We're done. That's it. The end of our trip tomorrow we are off to Milan and then we're off to another country to the north. So freaking excited for that but honestly we have loved every second of Tuscany. Is it also your favorite location in Italy? Yeah. Tuscany is A1 and Florence is unbelievable. Anyway we'll see you guys in the next video. Bye.