Where's Vinci?

Last weekend, I searched around for nearby towns to visit, and a few of us ended up going to Vinci, where of course, the famous Leonardo Da Vinci was born. I absolutely made it a priority to go (see #5 in this post here: 5 Things I Want To Accomplish in Italy).

We took a train, then a bus -- first time navigating this type of transportation on our own in the Italian countryside, about an hour away.

I'm pretty sure that when I looked up the town on tripadvisor, there were literally 2 attractions listed for the town. I'm not even sure you can call it a town, considering that there were less than 10 streets on this elevated hill. We went to the Leonardo Da Vinci museum and also visited his house. We saw less than 20 locals all day --- and this was a Saturday. The only other visitors was a group of British tourists, which we ran into only a few times.

(I apologize in advance for the quality of these photos -- I brought my great and mighty DSLR camera…and upon arriving, realized that I had left the battery back in Florence.)

The views were gorgeous, as the area is agricultural and the rain and sunshine alternated all day.

We took an intense hike to get to Da Vinci's house, passing by a number of houses…as well as chickens! This is someone's yard. We did not notice he was there until after the 5 of us had already taken a number of photos.

Everywhere we turned was so beautiful, and Vinci served as a beautiful day trip away from the busy streets of Florence. Wandering throughout the town made me wonder what it was like for Da Vinci to grow up… and how he became so motivated and inspired.

Vinci is so paint-able and seemed to be the Italian countryside at its finest. The museum had a number of his inventions and drawings, and it didn't hit me how practical and realistic Leonardo's innovations were until this trip. Everything he designed was meant, in some way, to make life easier at the time: navigating the Arno with a boat, using physics to design machines to manufacture textiles and wool. 

I wonder if, at the time, his community looked down on him at all for not doing "typical work." While everyone else was busy doing manual labor in agriculture, he was busy designing parachutes and inventing machine guns.

Such an interesting town to visit -- I highly recommend going off the beaten path a little and visiting the town of Vinci. It's probably not in your guidebook (it wasn't in mine) but it is worth going out of your way and is one of the most beautiful towns I've seen.

"The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding." - Leonardo Da Vinci