Homesick

Come visit the land of tranquility and grace, the birth of the Renaissance where soft language, slow pace, beautiful designs flow and blend. At the beginning of your day, you will experience a small breakfast. Coffee is in a demitasse cup filled with overly rich expresso. You will taste the salt of prosciutto and the sweetness of melons plucked from the chef's personal garden located just outside the screened kitchen door. Warm, thick crusted bread made from Mama's experienced hands, kneaded with love, and blends of cherry jams are washed down with l'acqua minerale. When finished with your breakfast, you open your story-high wooden shutters. Before you lives paradise: muted sunlight filtering through haze that rests like a blanket spreading softly over the broad, low-lying blues of the Tuscan hills. Neatly rowed vineyards stretch as far as the eye can see promising sweet wines for the evening. But this is only the morning, with its beginnings, fragrant smells of freshness, sounds of rising families, lures of awakened senses. Come, visit this land, settle into its rhythms, wrapped in the cocoon of the traveler's reality. Unfold, break free when ready, write your own recipe, sing your own song. Take your first step--your journey has just begun.