Keep your expectations

Rule #1: Keep your expectations
reasonable.
Consider the experience of two couples
I know who recently visited the
region. One fashioned an aggressive
itinerary that encompassed most of
the major towns I cover in chapter
6. And while they were able to say
they saw town after town, church
after church, and artwork after
artwork, they spent 2 or 3 hours a
day stuck in the car, fighting traffic,
the heat, and crazy truck drivers.
The other couple decided to take on
less turf and, naturally, didn’t see as
much; they even missed Cortona
and some of our other favorite
towns. Instead, they spent an entire
afternoon in a Montepulciano cafe,
splitting a chilled bottle of Orvieto
Classico, staring over a wrought-iron
balcony at a church in the distance.

In hindsight, they considered that
stop the pinnacle of their trip, writing,
“We wouldn’t have traded that
lazy Tuscan afternoon for the
world.”