The Beauty Farm

We were sitting upstairs one evening, Mihai, Linda and I, trying to plan our trip through Italy.
Linda was consulting her memory of past excursions as well as friends' recommendations, Mihai was online looking for hotels and I was searching through Sandor Clegane fanart images, browsing through La Tartine Gourmande diligently studying Italian road maps.
At that point our agenda wasn't very concrete, all we knew was that we were sure we wanted to spend a couple of days in and around Tuscany.  That meant we were wide open for suggestions on places to stay so when Mihai peered at the monitor and read "San Lorenzo A. Linari Beauty Farm and Health Spa" we felt no need to take such a preposterously-named option seriously.
Except it turns out it was one of the few places that wasn't $500 a night or in the middle of a city with no parking available or a place where we would be sharing a bathroom with 7 other guests (I'm pretty adventurous but at the end of the day I want to have my own toilet. Don't judge).
Our light-hearted jocularity turned into head-scratching serious contemplation: a beauty farm and health spa?  Try as I might I could come up with no realistic image of what such a place might look like.  Somewhere floating around in my brain was a sort of Italian version of a mega-plex we had stayed in outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Ugh.  But if it was cheap and we could park there, who cared?  We weren't going to Tuscany to look at the interiors of hotels, right?
A night in San Lorenzo A. Linari was booked and then promptly forgotten until our last morning in Bologna when the question arose: where are we going tomorrow?
I consulted my notebook (on rare occassions I can be organized) and read: "San Lorenzo A. Linari Beauty Farm and Health Spa".
Huh?
Oh yeah, (laughter all round) that beauty farm place!
When Mihai typed the address into the GPS, it would not recognize it as a viable, exact location, only the general area was found.  We asked the concierge at the hotel in Bologna but he was mystified as well.
Ah, no matter, we shrugged with the confidence that comes from standing in a well-known place in the daylight. We'll figure it out. Who cared about some mega-plex that was probably located right off the highway next to a McDonalds and a Billa?
I've forgotten exactly what we did that day, I'm sure Linda recalls, but the fact that is most germane is that by the time we headed off to The Beauty Farm, dusk was setting in.  By the time we took the road to San Lorenzo, it was dark.
A mega plex off the side of the highway?  Er, no.
Try a farm house in the middle of no where off a narrow, twisting cobblestone road and then a dirt road and then a dirt path off that.  No strip mall, no McDonalds, no lights.
Now I'm not saying I wanted to see a McDonalds or a strip mall because I did not but some kind of street sign or human inhabitant would have been comforting at that point.
You can imagine the conversation in the car as we drove around in the dark:
"I don't think this is the right road."
"What did that sign say back there?"
"Do we even have the address right?"
"Why didn't we get more details before we left Bologna?"
"This can't be the right road."
"What kind of place calls itself a beauty farm?" (the last was an irrelevant bit spoken out of frustration, I confess).
It turns out it was the right road.  But first we had to drive up and down it several times stopping about 50 meters (I swear I'm not kidding) from where the building was and turning around before we convinced ourselves we must be in the right place.
This is what the road looked like.  Only in the dark. Imagine.

We walked up the little hill, met the bespeckled proprietor and were shown to our rooms as if the preceeding dirt-road-in-the-dark-driving-confusion had never occurred.

Do the photos do it justice?  I don't know.  Would we have been so impressed if we hadn't been expecting a strip mall next door and floral-print polyester bedspreads in the rooms?  I don't know.
One thing for sure is that we regretted not knowing more about the accommodations because if we had we would have bought some wine, a good loaf of bread and some cheese to eat on the awesome wood table in the awesome room pictured above.  And there we would have celebrated our. wedding. anniversary.  Seriously.  It was almost completely forgotten.
In acknowledgment of the date we ate pistachios and finished off a bottle of mineral water we'd bought in Siena and together with Linda and the boys, talked about our favorite memories from that day fifteen years ago (how time flies).  Kind of a mini-party without good food or music. So kind of not a party at all. But other than wishing for some cake to go with the pistachios, I had no complaints.  Life was sweet that night at the beauty farm.
Or in any case it was better than the alternative which would have involved being lost and sleeping in the car.

The next morning after breakfast by a crackling fire we examined our accommodations in the daylight. Even with the fog and the dampness we remained impressed and wished we had more time to spend.  Alas, we'd been prepared for instant coffee and the sounds of the freeway nearby so we imagined we would be happy to rush off with nary a backward glance.  I'm sad to say that it was impossible to linger longer than 10:00 am that morning.
Take home lesson: never judge a hotel by its ridiculous name.

I can only imagine this place in the height of the Tuscan summer when the pool is open and the table tennis tournament is going full swing and all of the dining areas are filled with guests eating the aforementioned cheese, crusty bread, and sipping wine.

Oddly enough, this image made me wistful not for a chance to extend our year-long adventure so we can visit Tuscany next summer, but to return home.  Home as in California.  Where we will spent the height of the Santa Cruz summer (which is to say September) drinking wine and eating crusty, cheese drenched pizza and watch Stefan and Razvan running around on the lawn with Mircea and Lucian and my parents will have their grandsons with them once more. And all of the other members of our large and much-loved clan of friends and family will be only a phone call away: hey guys, the coals are hot, the dough is ready, come on over.
They say the best vacations are those that make you happy to go home again. For the first time since we left Santa Cruz I felt that way.  I suppose that was the real beauty from San Lorenzo A. Linari.

By the way, Linda has the down-low on the incredibly interesting history of this place.  I'm sure she will share it on her blog so use the link and look for it in the coming weeks. (no pressure, Linda, take your time <wink>)