Valentine's Day is celebrated with great enthusiasm in Italy. So get ready to celebrate when you rent a villa in Tuscany Valentine’s Day was initially celebrated as a Spring Festival by Italians, worth remembering when you stay at La Collina del Sole a beautifully located villas for rent in Tuscany This Lucca villa rental is within arm’s length of the Apuane Natural park hence for a romantic holiday villas in Lucca respite surrounded by nature at its best this villa rentals in Tuscany is the best thing going. Valentines celebrations were held in the open air, where young people would gather in orchards or ornamental gardens where they would enjoy listening to music and reading poetry together. Later they would stroll off with their Valentine into the gardens. The custom steadily died out over the course of the years and has not been celebrated since.In Turin, betrothed couples used to announce their engagement on Valentine's Day. Therefore several days ahead of February the 14th shops would guild their windows with china baskets loaded with delectable Valentine's Day candies tied with ribbons - these were to be presented as gifts to the newly engaged valentines. A bizarre tradition that Italians used to uphold was the practice of unmarried girls waking before sunrise on Valentine’s Day and standing by their window to watch a man pass by. This was because Italians strongly believed that the first man an unmarried girl laid her eyes upon on Valentine's Day would be the man she would marry within a year! Lucky postman! For the lovers of Italy, Valentine ’s Day is called “il giorno della festa degli innamorati”. A popular Valentine's Day gift in Italy is Baci Perugina - "Baci" chocolate "kisses" are small, chocolate-covered hazelnuts containing a small slip of paper with romantic poetic quotes in seven languages. These love notes are written in either: Italian, English, French, German, Greek, Spanish, or Portuguese. I thought I would leave you with a thought for the day that I read last time I ate one of those tasty balls of hazelnutty chocolate goodness… “Love doesn’t make the world go round, but love is what makes the ride worthwhile.”