San Miniato; slice of heaven

After a morning climbing the ‘other’ tower in Lucca and circumnavigating the walls again we set off by train and bus for San Miniato.

One of the things I adore about hiking is we often end up in little towns we otherwise would have passed right on by. We are in San Miniato because it’s our starting point walking the Via Francigena to Sienna. It’s a lovely hilltop town with a couple of towers and some lovely winding streets. And immense views of Tuscany.

This trip is what we’ve come to see as classic reverse engineering of a tour. We found a company doing a tour. Then with some research we found and booked the hotels they use, or better, and arranged for someone to move our heavy bags between hotels. Total cost: less than half the tour.

But the approach comes with some risks as we found out today when the hotel (a) informed us there were no taxis and (b) was useless with information on buses (the station is at the bottom of the hill, the hotel at the top). It’s a Sunday so the normal timetable doesn’t run. Some intensive research over breakfast gave us the answer which proved correct: the 290 bus which runs once an hour from the station took us right up the hill for a couple of Euro.  A booked tour would have provided an end-to-end solution. But this did give us a sense of satisfaction in having navigated by ourselves.

San Miniato is absolutely lovely and very small. After a refreshing beer to celebrate our arrival we climbed the Frederick II tower for even more amazing vistas. We’ve also met up with some other walkers – Connie and Jay – a lovely couple from the USA who were on our bus and are staying in our hotel.

We had an aperitivo in a bar with a view over the valley in one of those moments in which you just have to smile and appreciate. This is a stunningly beautiful area. It’s also what we expected and missed out on during our previous Tuscan outing when it poured with rain. This is heaven.