Unexpected travel suggestions can be dancing lessons from God

Back in the day when I was traveling in Europe in the proverbial college backpacking term, a temporary travel companion I met along the way and I were discussing serendipity in travel and how some of the best experiences are those that just unfold from unforeseen circumstances. She used the expression, "unexpected travel suggestions can be dancing lessons from God" and I have never forgotten this adage.

Mark and I had planned to go to Pisa today and check the leaning tower off the list. When I mentioned this in an initial correspondence with our Agritourismo host, Gabry, he seemed to sort of groan (if you can hear that in an email, and I think I did) and mentioned several other towns we might visit as we made our way to his villa from Rome. But we had still planned to take in Pisa, which would be an easy stopover when driving from our hotel in Porto Ercole (about two hours NW of Rome on the west coast) to Le Torri, Gabry's Agritourismo. That was the plan.

This morning as we enjoyed our breakfast with sea view I noticed an Italian couple next to us (they actually appear in the photo in the previous post where you see me seated at our table) in which the man was using an iPad mini. Thinking he was comfortable with the iPad I asked him to take the photo you see of Mark and me with my iPad. He then began to talk with us, in the most interesting combination of broken English and soft Italian (such a beautiful language!) and show us sights we might like by bringing them up on his iPad. We had said we were driving toward Florence today. Among the options he showed us was the ruin of a Cistercian Abbey called San Galgano. We checked San Galgano on the GPS, found this was right on our way if we skipped Pisa, and took the dancing lesson that had come our way through this gentle-speaking Italian who is obviously proud of the historical sights in his country.

Under a bright beautiful sky the remains of the gothic Abbey were splendid. We spent two happy hours exploring the area including the adjacent church with a legend of a knight who founded the monastery after leaving his military career to live as a monk. You can see in the photo the center of this legend which is the knight-turned-monk's sword stuck up to its hilt in a stone. This is the 'miracle' that occurred when the knight changed careers. The sun shone warmly on rolling hills planted with vineyards that surround San Galgano.

Pisa can wait.