Welcome back to our Italian road trip series.
So far, we've hiked the Dolomites,
camped in a beautiful mountain hut,
and immerse ourselves in Venice.
Now we drive south to explore Tuscany.
In this film, we indulge in some quintessentially Italian experiences.
We potter around Florence,
experience the process of making olive oil from scratch,
and drive a tiny classic car through the Tuscan countryside.
Subscribe to join along on our journey.
[Tania]: Ready for an adventure? [Adam]: City trip.
[Tania]: Come on, Trigs!
So we are heading into Florence.
Just for the afternoon because tomorrow it's going to be gray and cloudy,
so we're making the most of the last of the sun...
for this week anyway.
We've parked up in a wonderful little car park.
There's a 20 minute bus ride from Florence city centre, so it's perfect.
We caught the bus into Florence for two Euro each.
First stop, food.
We don't often visit cities, but when we do,
we love to make the most of the food and treat ourselves to things like smoothies and ice cream.
We pottered around before exploring one of the city's hidden historical spots.
So the thing with Italy is there's just so much history everywhere and
we are on our way to the oldest operating pharmacy in the world.
A bit random, but as long as its the oldest in the world anything,
we're there.
[Tania]: The history of Santa Maria Novella begins in 1221.
It's one of the world's oldest pharmacies,
which once made treatments for the black death.
Today, it's famous for its beauty products and scents.
Lots of which are still made using ancient recipes.
They even had something for Trigger.
Triggy what do you think? Is it nice?
The whole building is steeped with history.
It's part museum, part operating pharmacy.
A unique attraction.
[Tania]: Ohh that's nice.
It smells so good in here.
Adam doesn't like perfume, but I love perfume,
and I love the fact that it's just there's so much history here.
One thing to note about Italy is that everyone loves dogs.
Everywhere we go in Italy everyone stops Triggy and goes, "ahh piccolo! piccolo! piccolo!"
But you were saying that piccolino is even like smaller than small.
Yes so Triggy is called now, "Piccolino".
Picolino!
Beno means beautiful.
Bellino. Un popolino, un beno.
We're up bright and early this morning
to visit an olive grove because we are going to be doing some olive harvesting,
which I think is the most quintessential Tuscan thing to do.
So we're very excited.
After parking up at the top of the farm next to the olive trees,
Anna, who helps run the farm, gave us a tour of the grounds.
That's gonna be us later.
The Regioli Farm nestled in the hills of Tuscany was truly idyllic.
You really get a sense that being here for long enough,
you'd feel time moving slowly, and notice the season's transition.
The farm is an agriturismo destination.
Meaning you can visit as a tourist and work on the farm.
Everyone here is working in exchange for accommodation, food, or bottles of fresh olive oil.
So here we go. This is definitely going to be a first time for both of us.
Olive harvesting.
So excited and yeah really interested to see the quality of the oil
because we've just been told that it is far far different from...
[Tania]: ...far Superior.
Far superior from the oil you would get in supermarkets
and that's because the process is completely different.
Yeah so very excited. Triggy is in the backpack.
He's going. Literally Triggy it's coming olive harvesting how ridiculous.
Which is like... he goes from being in the same place all of his life with the same park
to now to climbing mountains and...
[Adam]: picking olives!
[Tania]: Like what? He is a posh pooch.
So the process is quite simple.
You basically just pick the olives and drop them on the ground
because we've set up a green sheet that will essentially catch them all,
and then that way we can collect them at the end.
[Adam]; They all land down here on the floor
and then they get pushed down to the bottom of the hill
and then scooped up into those buckets. Happy days!
[Tania]: Picking the olives was a really mindful task.
Something that can't be rushed.
It will take as long as it has to.
It's easy to spend a lot of time working on our laptops or phones.
Doing something simple and slow with our hands was a welcome change of pace.
[Tania]: Adam is admiring his handiwork.
Yeah, so this is now an empty olive tree.
But it's really interesting what we've learned.
Anna, who's one of the people who runs this whole farm.
She was explaining the olive trees are kind of like...
they have this kind of grounding energy.
I don't know whether it's energy or smell but apparently you feel in a better mood.
They're good for like grounding you.
If you're too high up in the clouds.
This is how she put it.
If you're up in the clouds it will bring you back down.
And if you're feeling low, then they'll bring you back up.
And it's so interesting because like Tania said,
when you're picking the olives... "Oh look! I found some olives!"
[Tania]: Oh you didn't do a good job then.
Some leftover olives. When you're picking the olives,
all you can do, is think about picking the olives,
and obviously there's a nice smell of the tree,
and you're outside and normally beautiful weather because olive trees like the warmth.
So yeah, there's just something really special about being around these trees,
and apparently it's it's not just us that feel it.
It's a thing.
[Tania]: It's mindful and also scientifically proven.
[Adam]: Scientifically mindful.
But yeah these are the olives, look.
So it's really interesting what happens when you squidge them.
Can I squidge it? Are you ready for the squidge it?
[Tania]: Oh good luck. Ahhhh!
[Adam]: Oh. Okay. Well there you go.
There's some of it on the lens.
It feels like milk that comes out of them, you see?
So they're kind of milky,
but apparently when you press them and properly squish them down,
the oil will come out a lot clearer.
But it will come out really green.
Each olive tree produces enough olives on average to make a range three to four liters of oil per harvest.
Picking olives and being a part of the process
really makes you realize how much hard work goes into each bottle,
and makes you appreciate the oil that little bit more.
[Tania]: Whoa so many!
[Adam]: Loads of them.
Ah it's lovely to be back in Jits after a hard day out on the olive groves.
You don't get to say that every day.
No, but yeah. It's just so cool to have Jits here
right next to where we're staying because they actually let you have camper vans here.
As well as their own accommodation and their own rooms.
We have just Jits right here. So it's just really nice.
[Tania]: Yeah, it's...I love being here and so it's nice to be next to nature,
and yeah it's lovely.
And yeah, they host us for dinner and for lunch,
and it's just kind of like the best of both worlds having Jits and having the place down there so lovely.
Don't judge Trigger. He was just giving himself a shower.
Was he?
A tactical shower.
Personal hygiene when you're in a van right? It's vanlife.
The morning started slowly. The way only a country morning does.
The cold dew resting on the olives.
The warm sun rising over the hills.
The people and animals rising early.
So we have been loving having Trigger in a van so much
that I jokingly.. Kind of we've been joking about cloning him a lot.
And I Googled it, and it turns out that that is a thing!
You can pay fifty thousand dollars to have your dog cloned.
I had no idea.
Thirty-five thousand to get a cat cloned by the way in case maybe that's more affordable.
But that's mad!
There's multiple companies that are doing this.
[Tania]: Yeah. And yeah I had no idea.
I didn't look into it any further than how much it cost and the fact that it was possible.
Yeah we were chatting about it and we were like oh we'd love to ask you.
What do you think of that?
Would you clone your pets?
Is it wrong or is it amazing? What is it?
Is it something we should be doing or should be like freaked out by?
Because I'm unsure about how I feel about it.
Yeah so let us know in the comments. Yeah let us know.
This is really exciting because all of these crates...
well we think all of these crates are going to get pressed this evening,
and we're going to go and watch the magic happen from olives to olive oil.
We bought a couple of bottles of the best olive oil money can buy.
Straight from the 2022 harvest and loaded the olives into the van.
We've got our olive oil and we might be taking some cats with us.
[Adam]: Oh I wish.
We drove to the olive pressing facility and the olives were weighed.
So we just unloaded all the olives into here.
They go down through little funnels
and then they end up on a conveyor belt and they get washed and strained
and pressed and everything.
[Tania]: During the olive harvest season, the olive factory runs 24/7.
You book your spot and turn up with your olives.
It was midnight by the time we saw our first drop of olive oil.
So behind this is the oil coming out of the pressing machine.
The whole factory here and this is it!
This is the spoils of everyone's work and the color is so cool.
What? I'm assuming you're gonna hear us, but who knows.
We were so grateful to be able to experience the process of making olive oil from tree to bottle.
We said goodbye and thanked Anna and Christian for allowing us to be part of this year's harvest.
It's been an early morning start for us and today we're doing something really different.
Something that's been on our bucket list for so long.
And yeah, cannot wait.
We're gonna leave Jits behind, and we're gonna go on a road trip!
We were hiring a classic car. A tiny classic car.
This is a 1960s Fiat, rented from vintage tours Toscana,
who kindly invited us to take it out for the day.
[Tania]: Whooah!
[Adam]: That's looks massive on camera.
[Tania]: Is it?
[Adam]: Yeah with this lens right here.
I like the sunroof.
This is amazing.
[Tania]: Whohooo!
Whooa It's like a go-kart.
[Tania]: It feels like a go-kart.
It doesn't feel safe I have to say.
[Tania]: You don't even know where we're going?
[Adam]: No, where are we going?
[Tania]: I don't know.
We are on our way to go to a little hot spring.
There seems to be a few of them dotted around Tuscany,
so we figured well we've got a little nippy car,
we'll just nip off to a hot spring.
If you've seen our first Italy film,
then you will see that we went to the very very famous one.
Which is called something I can't remember at the moment.
And we're on our way to a slightly less famous one,
but still supposed to be beautiful nonetheless.
In our little car that feels like a go-kart
We rattled along the beautiful Tuscan roads
and after Google taking us the wrong way,
and Adam not being able to get into reverse..
so Tania's gonna have to get out and push,
we made it to the baths.
We walked down to the thermal baths of San Felipo.
Unfortunately since Trigger couldn't go in, we had to take it in turns to take a quick dip.
Certainly not allowed in, aye Trigs.
That was lovely. Nice little pit stop.
It's not as busy as the other one, but it's still busy enough to be a busy thing.
But yeah, really good fun. Really glad we did it. Now back to the car.
We wanted to make the most of our little car,
so we spent some more time driving the beautiful roads of Tuscany
before reluctantly returning it.
A massive thank you to the lovely people at Toscana tours for giving us the opportunity
to experience this tiny classic car.
After a very exciting day in our little car,
we're back in Jits and we're off to park up somewhere.
Oh it's our favorite non-wild camping spot ever, and we stayed here in 2020.
Yeah we cannot wait to show you this we'll give you a proper little tour of it just to show you.
It just happens to be 15 minutes away from where we get the cars.
Oh it's so nice.
[Adam]: My god, Jits is flying.
She drives so nicely.
It's so funny because like driving her after driving a really old car it's like oh my god,
she drives so well,
but then it'd be interesting to drive like a really modern car.
Compare that to Jits because then I'd be like Jits is so clunky.
But now she feels so smooth.
This spot is our favorite non-wild camping spot that we have ever had.
It's just perfect.
It's got free electricity. It's got water. It's got bins.
It's obviously got places to empty your gray waste, your black waste.
And it's just... it's got everything and it's on the edge of a beautiful little old town
and it's got a lovely view over a vineyard and an olive grove.
Join us next time as we head further south and discover the beautiful Positano.
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