My Life in Tuscan Villas: How I Managed The Perfect Stay on a Budget

by Matt
(Florence, Tuscany, Italy)

If you've had too much Tuscan sun already, read on to find a new perspective on this special region of Italy. This is my quick story on how I got to find Tuscan villas to rent without draining my savings in one hit and also avoided all the usual tourist clichés.

I am sure you have been reading about Tuscany in Italy, and it seems that everyone is just rambling about the delicious food, famous and good wines, arts, history, warmth of people and so on. Do not get me wrong, these things are all true. But from the way things are usually portrayed, you may start thinking that your airplane to Pisa or Florence will land in the middle of a town fair in your honor, with everyone just waiting for you to dance, offering you wine and food, and spinning you around each city and town to let you discover the "True Tuscany".

Although Tuscan people is welcoming and food and wine delicious, you do have to engage yourself and start venturing both geographically and on a personal level to make the most of your vacation in Tuscany.

What do I mean by that? Let me tell you what I did. First thing I started searching for a Tuscan villa to rent. The idea was to spend a week or two (depending on what I got for the budget) with my friends in a property that could accommodate all of us, possibly with a swimming pool, and set in a relaxing hilly countryside location.

As you would expect, I googled my searches and was literally swamped with pages after pages of commercial websites, and each had tens of pages just on Tuscan villas. Which site to choose? And which villa? Pictures all seemed nice, but the more I looked the more I saw the same pictures across different websites, although the property name would change. I soon realized that these listings do not display the real property name to avoid me finding the direct contact with the owner and bypass the commission to the middleman.


But why should I pay for a commission on such an easy task as renting Tuscan villas? Therefore I set out to finding the direct website of the owner, not an easy task. These sites are usually small and on page five hundred on search engines. But then I hit the jackpot when I found websites that do list properties with their real name and set you in direct contact with the owner. This helped us save quite a lot as the owner was happy to avoid the intermediary.

The owner turned out to be an extremely nice person throughout our stay at the villa. He helped us with directions, took us grocery shopping while we were waiting for our rental car, brought us the produce he makes in his vegetable garden, his wife came and taught us to cook spaghetti the Italian way and a nice tomato sauce to go with it, and he gave us precious advice on wine producers for tastings and to buy some bottles at great prices.

On our part, we taught them some English and how to make cheesecake (they loved it!), and we promised to promote their villa in Tuscany among our friends.

So, definitely Tuscany and its people are a wonderful, but you need to engage in the discovery. Tuscans are quite reserved people that do respect other people privacy, therefore you will have to sense when they are opening up and be willing to return an open response.

In our case we immediately welcomed the owner's help and engaged in meaningful conversations even though his English was not perfect and our Italian totally absent. Which also reminds me: try your best to learn some very basic words in Italian, even just ten, and do not be shy and use them. It will make a whole lot of difference and you will attract the friendliness of locals like bees to honey!

When not working at his custom dirt bikes, Matt loves to vacation in Tuscan villas by owner that he usually finds on ThriftyTuscany.com.