Hi all.  Janice here again.  Trying to get caught up on our blog posts.  When last we met I had us up to Oct 2nd.  Now to continue on.
Oct 3rd - We travelled Bibbona to go to the beach there.  It was about a 2 hour drive.  Nice beach and there were not too many people.  The season for beaches for the locals is over but not for us Canadians.  To us it was a warm summer day.  We spent about 4 1/2 hours on the beach just lazing around.  Nice and relaxing.  We left about 5:30PM and went to Pisa to see the leaning tower.  We found it after asking a few people for directions once we got to Pisa.  Ed, Sharon and I went to the top of the tower (actually Ed made it almost to the top just the last several steps were a bit claustrophobic).   There were 254 steps up to the bell tower.  We can now cross this off our bucket list. Nice view from the top.  We then had dinner at a sidewalk cafe and drove back to the apartment.

Oct 4th  - Greve Tuscany

Today was a very interesting and different type of day. We started the day by joining the grape harvesters and helped pick the grapes.(did we mention that there was a vineyard right across the road from our villa, possibly 10 feet away.  We bought wine and olive oil from their vineyard and olive trees)   We then followed the hauling of the grapes to the juice extrator where the grapes were dumped into the feed hopper and only the stems came out the back end. We even were involved in the removing of the stems extruded by the machine to allow the extractor to continue to operate. The juice was then pumped into a large vat for initial maturing. (A large pipe ran under the road and into the vat) This was all accomplished with hand jesters and smiles - none of the harvesters or owners could speak english. Once we knew they could handle the rest of the harvest without our help we went to a winery for a tour of their operations - learning all the processes of the maturing of wine - then to the dining room for bread, cheeses and of course wine tasting. This completed the circle from picking the grapes to drinking the wine.

When we returned to the Villa and met an elderly gentleman who lived in the estate who did not speak a word of english. Somehow, again through hand jesters and smiles, he invited us into his house where we learned that his wife had died and it still brought tears to his eyes when he told us about it in Italian. He showed us his fantastic gem and fossil collection and it turns out he is a well recognized published poet. He had pictures on the wall with the Pope, President of Italy, and many other dignitaries. Amazingly after about 45minutes we left giving him a hug while he and Sharon were crying - and no one could speak the other's language. Perhaps his poetic flare came through in our visit.

Pictures to follow