Possibly Italia's most famous region, Toscana (Tuscany) sits on the western side of the peninsula, north of the region of Lazio which contains Rome.

The popular image of Toscana is that of a temperate and sunny land of rolling hills and vineyards, dotted with poplar trees.

Actually that's not so very far off the mark, though it has slightly fewer Diane Lanes and young, shirtless, muscular Italian workmen than one might expect if one's entire knowledge of the region came from having watched the movie Under The Tuscan Sun.

However it is home to a lot of historic towns and cities as well, notably the capital Firenze (Florence).

On the package tour we spent 4 nights and three days in Tuscany and later came back to Firenze for another two days, though one of those was committed to a day trip to the Cinque Terre in Liguria.

No, it was not enough.

I strongly recommend viewing any of these photos at their original size.

I used Nuance Dragon Dictate to generate a lot of the captions. That means that there are likely to be some screwy expressions that I somehow missed in the sub-editing. Feel free to leave a message if you see one. Dragon is far less accurate than it claims to be, but it's still faster than typing.