WoW Sun Tours
Tuscan Holidays for Solo Woman Travellers
A PERSONAL LIVING LIKE A LOCAL IN TUSCANY STORY
ABOUT US
In Olden Days, when the internet was in its infancy, and when the Sunday papers were still the best place to book a holiday, we took a punt on an Italian family holiday staying in a converted tobacco tower outside the town of Cortona. It was backed up on a website containing a few fuzzy photos, and was happily quite cheap..
The journey from Rome had been interesting, in our tiny hired car, with our 2 year old daughter asleep in the back, along with bad signposting, suddenly petering out, the idiosyncrasies of Italian driving, darkened roads, and only the vaguest of paper instructions to get us there. But driving down the glorious cypress lined avenue leading to our destination, tall shadows in the moonlight, and turning into a beautifully appointed renovated Tuscan farmhouse, the swimming pool glowing in the darkness, my husband turned to me and said ‘ I think we’ve scored here ‘.
I remember too, walking for the first time down the darkened narrow seam, known as the Rugapiana, that is Cortona’s main street, and emerging into the exquisite piazza, lined with cafes and with people eating pizza, ice cream, or just watching, sitting idly on the big stone staircase that descends from the clock tower of the main comune Building. I hadn’t expected something quite so perfect, and it kind of took my breath away.
Fast forward 6 years, two more children, and an earnest conversation with my husband in which I’d ruminated over my itchy feet, the desire to feel the sun, experience another culture, just for a while. Scottish skies loomed grey, and I REALLY wanted a slice of that Dolce Vita. We rented a small house, two minutes from that first Cortona holiday experience, and that, as they say, was that. 17 years later, we are still there, having made our home from a converted ruin (now therein lies a story‼), started a ski business in the Italian Dolomites, put 3 children through Italian school, driving tests and jobs. We’ve made friends, become regulars at the pizzerie, tennis club, gym, bar and hairdressers, finding ourselves not greeted as transient foreigners, but as those crazy Scots who made their home there and are simply part of the fabric.
The journey to Italianess has not always been easy. We’ve made many mistakes along the way. The process has been one of trial and error, of one step forward, sometimes with two steps back. But out of the individual pieces of the puzzle has emerged a hefty slice of that longed for Dolce Vita, not entirely Italian, but not British either, a sort of hybrid of the Best of them Both. Building on the success of our Women Only WoWSkiTours based on 17 years of skiing in the Italian Dolomites, we’d love you to share in all the best bits of our Tuscan Adventure too. At WoW Summer, we aim to do that by showing you the highlights of all our hard gained knowledge to get you under the surface of the real Italy .
Our Italian experience has been our defining moment, why not make it yours?