It took us a little more than two hours to drive to our villa from Rome on Saturday. It was hard to know exactly what to expect; we’d booked it based on an internet description and I wasn’t even sure exactly where it was. I knew it was near Arezzo and thought perhaps it was in the town, but in fact it was a few miles North, up a winding road into the hills. Vezza is a tiny place consisting of the Villa property and about 3 other houses. I was pleased we were out in the countryside and we had wonderful views from the hill. You can see all my photos taken on the Villa property here (there are lots more than in this post).
We were a group of 25 and had booked the whole place, which consisted of a villa and attached cottages, all converted into one and two bedroom apartments. Part of it is reserved for the owners, who arrived partway through the week for their summer vacation. They told us about the history of it. The tower and main villa were built in the 12th century for use by soldiers in a war between Florence and Arezzo. The tower foundation, not visible from the outside, is older – it goes back to Etruscan times (the Etruscans were the people who lived in Tuscany before the Romans, over 2000 years ago). In the 18th century these were converted into a renaissance villa, retaining the 12th century wall structure, but adding a roof. I think some of the attached cottages were built at that time for villa workers to live in, but parts of them are much older. Part of the one we were in was originally a Roman lookout tower.
The owners bought the property 20 years ago when it was not in great shape and spent nine years restoring it and adapting it to use as a rental property. They added the pool which we all appreciated! It was still hot on Saturday, the day we arrived and many people got in the pool as soon as we had unpacked our cars.
On Sunday it was hot again and most of us were tired from travelling there. So we all decided to spend the day at the Villa (everything was closed anyway, so it seemed) rather than going out.
We had dinner outdoors in the courtyard every evening. The first night we were served a restaurant meal but the other days we bought food and the chef cooked it for us and served it to us. Given the size of our group this made things much easier for us than if we’d been doing our own cooking and washing up! And it was cheaper than buying a restaurant meal every night. The chef didn’t speak English but was very friendly in Italian and in non-verbal ways, especially to the children. She did a great job turning the assorted things we bought into dinners. And the caretaker gave us suggestions of what to buy, which was a big help. He told us about local specialtiy foods and said the quality of food was as good – and cheaper – at the Arezzo Ipercoop (hypermarket) as the produce at the smaller daily markets in local towns. We all enjoyed the food in Tuscany.
We were in the highest cottage – it was quite a climb to get up to it from the pool. In return for that we had awesome views down into the valley. Ben stayed in it with us; West and the two other oldest girl cousins Zoe and Jessica (the three girls in the pool picture above this) had their own cottage. They had cooked breakfast and lunch many days which they prepared themselves in their cottage – they did more cooking than anyone else except the chef!
They let us use their internet hook-up. My cousin’s husband connected it to a wireless hub which meant several of us could use it at once (five of us had laptops there).
We were very pleased how our stay at Villa Vezza worked out – it was a great place for a big group with lots of children to stay and the location was wonderful. While we were there we visited some nearby places – I’ll upload the photos for those and write about them when I have time.