My two aunts totally get me. We share a wanderlust gene in our DNA that seems to have skipped over other family members, unlike height and incredibly thick hair. They have the same strange giddiness about Europe that I do. They don’t speak any European languages, and I only speak Italian and stutter through Spanish, but we ALL speak coffee, cheese, and castles.

The two of them – my father’s two sisters – came to Italy a few weeks ago to visit it and me. They came to Rome for about a week (my Aunt Jen’s first time here), and hit up all the usual spots.

And, then, the three Knight women went to Tuscany.

Tuscany, Tuscany, what to say about Tuscany? That place of green and brown hills so smoothly defined that they look more like ripples than hills. That place of rows and rows of leafy vines with swollen black grapes, separated only by rows and rows of sunflowers that rotate so noticeably that, if you drive from morning until dusk, they seem to be following you, not the sun. That place of medieval towns and abbeys that spring from the hillsides like mushrooms, and in which you can consume mounds of pasta with mushrooms, and drink wine. And wine.  And wine.

I lived in Tuscany for about 6 months when I first came to Italy in long-ago 2001. I lived with my friend in Colle Val d’Elsa near Siena that summer and fall while I waited for my job in Rome to start. It was tiny and sleepy and there were no other Americans in sight. It was one of those walled postcard towns, and I strolled around laden with grocery bags and books, feeling like I was walking on a giant sculpture rather than in a city. I spent the entire day of my 22nd birthday on a boat, a tiny, metal boat with oars, actually fishing along the coast of Elba, that rocky Tuscan island where Napoleon was (probably pleasantly) exiled. Exactly two weeks later, while most of you were just arriving to work or school, I was in Colle Val d’Elsa dozing off in front of my friend’s TV when RAI news interrupted the afternoon movie to breathlessly report that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers. I sat up, blinked, and watched while the second one hit. Then my (first) cell phone rang, and it was my father. Emotions poured out of us. A few hours later I remember going to a bar with Massimo for a coffee, and when I entered, forks fell. Everyone stared at me. You could have heard a pin drop. I was The American Girl in town, and everyone knew it.

I could and should write a lot more about those months. No job or responsibilities, shockingly young, and with a personal Tuscan tour guide who was equally young and carefree, so we could spend our days doing impossibly bucolic things like gathering wild mushrooms in the woods, or stomping around looking for Etruscan tombs.

But let’s fast forward to a few weeks ago when my super-fun aunts and I went to Tuscany to stay in some castles.

They went up a day before I did, and then they picked me up at the train station in Arezzo in the rented car. We wound our way through the countryside until arriving at the Castello di Gargonza, where we would spend the next three nights. A 12th century castle between Arezzo and Siena. Let me tell you, the rooms were elegant but cozy, with fireplaces and views of countryside and towers and sunsets. Breakfast was wonderful. Y’all know I love a good hotel breakfast. Our time-traveling imaginations were stimulated. It was just how you picture an Italian castle, with brown stones and courtyards with wells and a chapel. It looked like Romeo and Juliet must have met, fallen in love, and died right there.