Fall 2006 Trip with ARS Member Piero Sambucci
by Connie LeClair
Piero Sambucci is a member of the ARS who lives in Velletri, in the Alban Hills outside of Rome, Italy. He runs an ad in the Journal inviting members and their friends to tour Italy with him and stay at his very comfortable B. & B. He provides all meals and transportation. He takes four or five people in his van and offers tours around Rome as well as Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast. We spent three weeks with him.
Our visit to Italy, along with our friends, Joyce and Jack, started with three days in Venice on our own. We then took a train to Rome where Debby, Joyce's daughter met us with Piero at the train station. Piero's B. & B. was very comfortable and the food was excellent. Piero's driving and parking was outstanding. That man can parallel park a van with three inches at each end! This is especially useful in Rome and Florence. Piero packs sandwiches, fruit and water in the van each morning, which saves a lot of time and money. He tries to find scenic places for us to have lunch, though it often has to be in the van. We didn't mind a bit as we were usually ready to sit down by then. Visiting Italy requires a lot of walking. Piero was very courteous and tried to save walking as much as possible, sometimes leaving us off at one end of a town and picking us up at the other.
Piero showed us a wide variety of interesting sites. We went to gardens, of course, museums, churches, art galleries, beautiful hilltop towns, vineyards, crystal and clay pot factories, along with the usual famous places. He is very flexible. He took us to Lucca to meet friends for lunch as well as the towns where Joyce and my ancestors originated.
We spent a week in Tuscany where he booked rooms at an Agritourist in the Chianti Hills, centrally located for touring Tuscany. What an interesting place to stay. It is not a four star hotel, but it was comfortable and clean and they were harvesting grapes while we were there. They even had a swimming pool. We had breakfast there and he again packed lunch. We had lovely dinners in various restaurants in the area. The views in Tuscany were outstanding and he knew the scenic routes.
Back in Velletri after a couple of days, we took a four day, three night, trip south and visited Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast as well as the two towns of our ancestors. We stayed at another agritourist very near the coast in Piano de Sorrento that had a mini farm and restaurant. They grew olives, grapes and other vegetables and had a few animals. We enjoyed it very much.
Since I had the bad back and was the only plant person, my place of honor in the van was the front seat where Piero and I could discuss plants. He has a small nursery where he grows azaleas and camellias. Some of the plants I saw in Italy were Pinus pinea, which produces the pine nuts for making pesto. They also grow hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, pomegranates, many varieties of lemons, melons, figs, as well as the usual vegetables and fruits. They have many chestnut trees, and people were harvesting chestnuts along the roads. Growing in Italy were two varieties of oak, one evergreen, along with the majestic Cyprus Italicum. These are used extensively to line long driveways. They seem to grow wild on the hillsides in Tuscany. Capers grow on the walls and are lovely hanging plants. Along the Amalfi Coast we saw several pink flowering trees (Chorisia) with thorny branches. Blue morning glories grew wild along the cliffs. Cedrus Atlantica is very abundant throughout Italy
If you are interested in a tour of Italy, I would highly recommend Piero. His web site is www.bbsunrisehouse.com.