Several years ago, on a beautiful fall day in the little village of Valpaia in the hills of Chianti I was introduced to an impish Italian tour guide and fellow writer, Dario Castagno. He was sitting with two American clients, sharing a bottle of Chianti Classico and eating a sumptuous luncheon of Tuscan specialties, ribollita, made of cannelloni beans and vegetables, a rabbit stew, and a desert of tiramasu. He offered me a glass of wine and we discussed his just-published book, Too Much Tuscan Sun, the title being a not-too-subtle play on Frances Maye's best-seller, Under the Tuscan Sun.

Maye's book, which seems to have been read by every other visitor to the area, is one American's view of Tuscany. Castagno's irreverent treatise, which I bought on the spot and read that night, is a Tuscan's view of Americans - well, some Americans, mainly Dario's more colorful charges.

I was both amused and chagrined by what he revealed about my countrymen, not least because many of the characters he featured were all familiar types. There are portraits of grand tourers with little interest in what they were seeing; young lovers oblivious to the world around them- or to their guide; desperate but ever-hopeful singles; compulsive talkers; compulsive shoppers, ever on the lookout for that latest example of globalization, "The Outlet" - overbearing know-it-alls, and several others.

But, the more I read, the more I realized his sampler did not include many categories of the vast army of visitors to one of Italy's most popular provinces. I thought of those who could never afford a private guide: middle-class first timers, such as schoolteachers, who had assiduously saved for their special tour of Italy. I thought of all those third generation Italian-Americans I had met who were looking for their roots. I thought of artists and writers and others doing their own things, and those on well-organized specialty tours on buses or bikes or afoot run by travel agencies, alumni associations, and trekking companies.

Although a frequent visitor to the country, I had entered Dario Castagno's turf and his favorite lunch spot, as a member of that last named cohort - a walking tour.

Our group of 17 men and women, including three guides, ranged in age from the mid-twenties to 70, but most were in their 50's and 60's. Professionals, business people, and educators, we hailed from all parts of the U.S. and hardly fit any of the standard stereotypes.

Although many of those in our party had been to Italy before, some to that very area, what united us was the love of hiking and the desire to take in what we could in a week's time, walking in the countryside with visits to a number of small towns and some serious urban hiking in the towered city of San Gimignano and Florence's age-old rival, the hilly city of Siena. Even those for whom hiking long distances -in Italy or anywhere in the world - was the prime motivator were also eager to see much of the art and architecture that they had heard and read about.

The trip, organized by Clare Grabher, the owner and director of the implausibly (for Italians at least) named New England Hiking Holidays, which operates walking tours in many parts of the U.S., the U.K., and Europe, was everything claimed in her colorful and appealing brochure.

We had three spirited guides: Nancy Fitts, a hyper-active professional outdoors-person from France who has long resided in New Hampshire; Elizabeth Wicks, an American art restorer from New England who has lived and worked in Italy for more than 20 years, and Liza Luppino, a young Italian artist who also grows and harvests olives in a tiny village near Florence now owned by her family. With the leadership of Nancy, Liz, and Lisa, and our own insatiable curiosity, we never got too much of the Tuscan sun, or the Tuscan spirit.

We saw much of what most tourists, such as those led by Dario Castagno would see on his tours. But we also saw other things - from the ground up. Especially memorable were long rambles above the town of Greve, visits to medieval cities like Castellina and Volpaia, the tiny fortress of Monteriggione, the long uphill approach to San Gimignano and the much longer and more rugged treks along the ridge of the Apennine mountains.

The places we hiked varied as did the places we stayed. All of the latter were first class respites to return to after long days on roman roads, country lanes, city streets, and mountain trails. The first was the elegant Hotel Villa Aurora in the town of Fiesole, perched above the city of Florence, where we would also spend our eighth and last night.

The next base was the Villa Casalecchi near Castellina di Chianti. The hotel, at the center of an old estate, still features gracious living replete with white-coated waiters in its elegant dining room and first-class fare at the table.

Three days later we moved from the classy country comfort of the Casalecchi to the more folksy ambience of the Albergo Granduca, a former Medici hunting lodge in the Campigna woods in the center of the Casentino National Park.

From the Granduca we spent three days hiking anywhere from 5 to 15 miles through magnificent stands of chestnut and pine. One trip led to the top of the highest peak, Monte Falco (1658 meters above sea level); a second,, the longest of all, took us along the ridge of the Appenines to the little town of Camaldoli to a very old Eremo (Hermitage); the last, a speedy descent down the Adriatic side of the mountain from the Granduca, a rest and then an invigorating climb back up.

The first two hotels were located in in places with picture-book familiarity: stone farmhouses, hillside vineyards and olive groves, 8 stately cypress trees and long vistas with tiny villages on distant hilltops. We were especially fortunate to have been there in the harvest season and were able to watch the gathering of grapes and their processing and the picking of olives and their pressing. Luckily, we had many chances to sample both.

The last hotel was very high in the mountains, just over the Passo della Callo where a major battle between allied forces and German soldiers had been waged in 1943. While signposts reminded us that the world had once come to these tranquil woods, we felt we felt we were very far from any madding crowds.

In fact, the only sounds we ever heard during our nights in the lodge were the roar of the wind, the rustling of wild boars running through the underbrush, and the guttural come-hither rutting cries of cervi stags, the male members of the elk-like deer family. On the trail, we heard fewer sounds. One member of the group called it a "magical forest." - it was.

Withal, our trip was magical in many ways. Great venues, great hikes, great food, great wine, great guides and, perhaps most important (though rarely mentioned in travel essays), a most compatible group of far-from-ugly Americans.

Many of those on our very brief Tuscan odyssey were veterans of New England Hiking Holidays', one couple having been on 14 trips, many of them in back in the States, some abroad. After only a week with this company, my wife and I were ready to sign on for another of the excursions offered by NEHH, maybe the one in the Pyrenees or the one inWhen I got back home I wrote to Dario Costagno urging him to spend a day with the next gang from NEHH. It thought would give him another set of portraits to his sketches of those variegated odd birds in the genus Tourista Americana. Unfortunately, I never heard from him again.

*SoGoNow editor Peter Rose is a sociologist, writer, and photographer.
This is an illustrated and updated version of a prize-winning story first published in Travelworld International in 2004.