"Christine Dabney" > wrote in message >
> Tuscany is one of the places I want to visit someday, and preferably
> spend some time. I fell in love with the descriptions of it in
> Frances Mayes' books...
>
> A few rfc'ers have talked about maybe doing a semi-foodie vacation in
> Italy somewhe my vote is for Tuscany. The idea was to maybe rent a
> house for a few weeks/month..and make it our base. Plus do a great
> amount of cooking and eating while we are there..shopping from the
> local markets, etc.

You have the right idea. The exchange rate sucks right now, but there are
bargains to be had on renting a villa. Some are going for half price,
others are negotiating the listed prices. Airfare is not all that bad, less
than it was a year ago.

We've have breakfast at the villa, then head out for the day. We'd have or
main meal at a restaurant, then return to have a light dinner of whatever we
bought at the local markets. Usually some combination of: bread, cheese,
fruit, salami, and of course a bottle of wine.

We stayed here on the last trip
http://www.villeinitalia.com/houses/...tHouseNumber=8

I've not checked car rentals recently. In our case, it was about the same
price and faster to fly into Milan and drive to the villa than to lay over a
couple of hours and fly to Florence. The drive down was just part of the
tour and we drove to Venice and stayed for a couple of days before heading
home. .

If you rent the place for a month and have people stat to split costs for a
week or so at a time, it would be a blast. Our first trip was 10 days, our
second was 12 days, our next will be at least two weeks.