After Cinque Terre and La Spezia we stayed for two weeks in a holiday park in the Tuscany hills. Norcenni Girosole is an incredible holiday park under the HU brand, located near Florence in the hills of Tuscany.

It’s a sprawling village of holiday facilities, including multiple swimming pools, restaurants, cafes, activities and even a small supermarket. If you’re familiar with the Big 4 style of holiday parks in Australia, imagine that but times x 100.

We decided to book two weeks there as we found a ‘to good to be true’ deal during the Black Friday sales in 2023 - we stayed in a 3 bedroom cabin and it was so cheap considering the prices includes use to all the pools.

The park is only open from April - October and closes down for the winter. We arrived in mid September and were a little disappointed to discover that the park was winding down for the season, which meant that half the pools (the ones located in the top half of the village ) were closed. And there wasn’t a lot of the kids club activities, shows or fitness activities happening.

But it did mean that there wasn’t a lot of people around, it looks likes it’s extremely busy in the summer months.

The girls loved swimming in the pools and going down the slides. The water in the pools was a little too cold for me but we had some warm sunny days were we could enjoy the water parks and relax in the sun.

One of the highlights of our time at Norcenni Girosole was the low ropes course that included a zip line. Hallie was very keen to try it but we were surprised when Farley put her hand up for it too. Farley usually doesn’t like heights or wobbly parts of playgrounds so it took Braino and I by surprise when she said she wanted to give it a go. We were so proud of all the girls for completing the course, including the zipline, but it was very special to see Farley challenge herself and overcome her fears.

While we were at Norcenni Girosole we did a day trip to Pisa, a day trip to Florence, a day trip to San Gimignano and then two nights in Rome, which we travelled to by train. We also did a morning at a local winery where we got to harvest some grapes and learnt about the wine making process, which was really fun. I’ll share more about these trips in there down individual blog posts.