Texas to Italy: Visiting San Miniato, Day 1

Tanner is finally going to Italy with PEGAI’s Creative Director, Carmen Suarez! They took with them the remade $ 1,700 Louis Vuitton bag which got some really good responses from people in Italy. If you want to travel to Italy, you can watch this video of Tanner and Carmen as they take you with them on their business trip to Italy!

TRANSCRIPTION / WRITTEN ARTICLE

Hello, folks! As we said, we are at DFW airport right now for the first leg of our journey to Italy. We’re flying to JFK airport from here. We are here with Carmen, our Creative Director, and he’s going to be with us for the entire trip – shooting a lot of beautiful pictures and videos for you. The journey starts here and thank you for following us. Let’s do this!

Hey, folks! We barely made it to our flight to Milan. We were about to miss it because we forgot to fill out our passenger locator form. So this is a warning if you’re traveling to Italy these days: you got to fill out the form before you get your boarding passes. That was a little scary. Anyways, we made it so we’re happy to start this journey from New York to Milan. I’ll see you guys at the Milan airport. Ciao!

Hey, folks! Finally, we made it to the Milan airport. It was an easy trip overall except we were about to miss our flight from New York, but we made it. There’s a nice art piece here. We are kind of being welcomed into the art world of Milan. Now, we’re heading off to the rental car space and we will start driving towards Santa Croce where the magic tanning happens. We’ll see you guys there!

Hey, folks! Welcome to Milan! We just got into our rental car and started driving towards Santa Croce – the little magical town where we’re going to meet the beautiful leather. So far, so good. Everything was smooth except we almost missed our flight from New York but that’s okay. We made it safely and I think it’s just going to get more fun and exciting after this point. We want to enjoy Italy and have an Italian experience so we got ourselves a Maserati to feel the Italian passion in the car. We want to experience this craftsmanship in our two-day stay here in Italy in any way possible. We will talk in bits and pieces as well - maybe even talk about their leather seats. Examine what kind of leather they used since we’re all about leather, right? Stay tuned and keep watching!

A quick note from our flight from DFW to New York: we got asked twice about our bag (Frankenstein bag). As I was expecting, this bag will turn heads. People stopped and told us, “Hey, that’s a nice bag! What brand is it?” and all that. We explained that we are on a quest to start this brand and collection and that’s the purpose why we’re heading to Italy: to get the leather for it. They were really interested. The first guy who asked about it said that he could buy the first one right away. I wish we could make a sale but you know, the first one is for us to enjoy. The others will be for you.

Whew! We made it. Finally, we are in San Miniato. This little town is a neighbor to Santa Croce. The tanneries which we’re going to visit tomorrow are in Santa Croce. Now, we’re in our hotel town. It was a bit of chaos in the past 10 to 15 minutes since we were trying to find parking in our hotel on these very narrow streets and with a lot of restrictions that we don’t even understand when we were trying to read the signs. But it was totally worth it. This is a very characteristic Italian town and I think we’re going to enjoy staying here. Look at this (view)!

And now we are at the hotel! Just checked in to this cute and very authentic hotel. It’s, overall, feeling very much like Italy. So, that’s a castle-looking building with a great view of Tuscany's nature. Now, it’s time to get some rest. I think it has been over 24 hours that we’ve been on the road. We’re going to get a couple of hours of sleep and then go out and check the antique market out there today. They have a special event this Sunday so we’re lucky. We’re going to explore some Italian antiques. See you guys there!

We ran into a “Sunday Arts and Crafts,” more like an antique market and this was unexpected. We didn’t plan for it. It just adds a little more flavor to our tour. After a couple of hours of sleep at the hotel and after checking in, now we get to see this cute little activity going on in this town. Now, it’s time to eat something. I think pasta or pizza might be in place but let’s see what is waiting for us. We’ll see you there!