Contact Me to make comments or suggestions

Lee's Travel Guide:
Home page
Itineraries
Links

Sunday:
Carrara
Podere San Lorenzo
On to Monday»

Sunday Afternoon Driving to the
Agriturismo Podere San Lorenzo near Volterra, Italy

The route to Volterra

For our drive from Carrara to the Podere San Lorenzo on Sunday, the GPS took us down a highway near the coast, the A12, also labeled the E80, and known as the Autostrada Azzura (Azure Highway or Blue Motorway.) We followed this as far as Pisa, then followed the Strada Grande Comunicazione Firenze-Pisa-Livorno east to the SP23 and then to the SR439dir.

The route from Carrara to Volterra

From Pisa to Volterra

Because I told the GPS simply to take us to Volterra, without a specific address for the agriturismo, it then had us turn off onto the Via Pisana, which brought us directly through the town of Volterra. Once there, I gave it the address of the Podere San Lorenzo and it brought us to our destination, to the east of Volterra.

Turning off onto the Via Porta Diana toward Volterra.

Driving to Volterra

Here are some views of the drive to Volterra.

Grape vines

A sculpture in the middle of a roundabout

A quintessential view of Tuscany

Sunflowers

More grape vines

A gate in the city wall of Volterra

Podere San Lorenzo

In the afternoon we arrived at the agriturismo Podere San Lorenzo where we spent the next couple of days. An agriturismo is like a bed and breakfast, except that to be able to use the term agriturismo it has to be a working farm. The Podere San Lorenzo has about 1200 olive trees and make their own award winning olive oil.

We turned down a long, winding driveway to get to the Podere San Lorenzo.

Here is a view of the agriturismo from the driveway.
You can see some of the olive trees and off to the right is a fig tree.

The welcome sign.

This is a photo of the Podere San Lorenzo taken from the other side of the pond/swimming pool.

This is a photo I took through the screen in the window of our room.

This is looking from where we parked our car toward the doorway of the hallway that led to our room.
You can see the door of our room inside.

This is the view from the top of the steps toward our car.

And this is looking back down the driveway.
The garden is over the wall on the left.

The next few photos are some views of Tuscany from the Podere San Lorenzo.

Here is a view of a portion of the garden.

You can see some of the young olives in this close-up of an olive tree.

Here is a close-up of the bell and chimney on top of the building. This was originally a Franciscan chapel. Pilgrims on their way to Rome would stop here to seek a night's lodging and sustenance.

Dinner in Volterra

Once we were checked in and had gotten settled, we took a drive back into Volterra to find a place to get something to eat. The Podere San Lorenzo can provide dinner if you request it, but not on the weekends. We found a Pizzaria Ristorante near the ancient Roman theater and had a very nice little meal. So far, we have not had a bad meal in Italy anyplace we have been.