Hill Towns

I honestly, at this point, don't know how many hill towns we saw in Tuscany. Seemed like there was a new one almost every day. They were charming and full of pottery, tiny streets, wine tastings, and great locals. We really loved Sienna, and were there just a week before the annual horse race that they have around the town's main piazza. So the dirt was laid down and well packed and the bleachers were set up in front of all the stores all the way around the entire piazza. The horses will run just where those people and tables are.


One of the main buildings in the Piazza


Love this shot of this waitress waiting for customers at magic hour in the Piazza. The light is amazing.


San Gemignano - Super cool pottery and somehow we managed to be there during some sort of block party...for lack of a better word. They shut down part of the main street and set up tables for dinner. We also went to a specialty cheese shop and found a chocolatier. Both were AMAZING.


We did a lot of wine tasting in Montalcino and Montepulciano. And Montalcino is SO high on the hill, I truly felt like we were about to drive into a cloud.




On our drive from Montepulciano to Cortona, it rained for the first time since our first day in Lake Como. We snapped a ton of pictures out the car window as we were driving, and proved Geoff's point about being able to throw your camera down the street in Italy and be able to take a great picture.



Fun shots of the crazy clouds during the rainstorm.



Cortona (made famous by "Under the Tuscan Sun") was gorgeous and though we'd been led to believe it was overrated by the guidebooks, we really enjoyed it. It rained slightly while we were there but we were undeterred and found a little restaurant where we could eat outside (even though they looked at us like we were crazy) And this is where we had one of our best meals of our whole trip.


That is a chilled tomato soup in that huge wine glass in front of me. It was amazing. Our waiter said I couldn't leave Tuscany without trying it. Though he did say that the chef doesn't make it quite as good as his grandmother.

At home in Tuscany

Though we went on road trips galore during our 12 day stay in Tuscany, we did spend a few days closer to home in and around our villa in the little town of Montespertoli. You've seen some of it already, but even with all its challenges, it was a good home base. Every morning we had breakfast at the house before setting out for the day on our many adventures. Somehow, we didn't manage to discover the amazing world of espresso until 3 or 4 days before we left. Largely, this was because I was intimated by the espresso machine, and Geoff, not being a huge coffee drinker himself, was mostly just unaware of it. And so that left me to make American coffee almost each morning. In Tuscany. Which is so wrong somehow. I mean....when in Rome... (or Tuscany)...

So we finally discovered espresso. Our lives may never be the same. Now, we'd had it served to us at various restaurants and cafes during the trip, but to make it for ourselves...? Fortunately, my husband is a brilliant engineer. Not that it takes an engineer to run an espresso machine, but Geoff is so good at knowing how things WORK. He is incredibly gifted in that way, which has proved extremely handy in every possible way, from installing things around the house to knowing the best way to wind up your iPod headphones so they don't get tangled, and the espresso machine was a walk in the park for him. AND, we discovered that he loves espresso - even more than regular coffee. AND espresso proved to be the best way to get a little caffeine in the morning before setting out. Coffee, you linger and chat over. Espresso gets you going quickly when you've got to get on the road to an amazing Tuscan destination.


We occasionally had lunch or dinner at the house too. Which usually consisted of: wine, bread with olive oil, caprese salad and some sort of pasta bolognese (Geoff's favorite).


We even spend one day at the house just chilling out. We'd tried to go to a pool cause we'd had so many road trips and it was hot and we just wanted a day to relax. We tried the fancy pool, which was closed for the season (in the summer??) and then the town pool, which was packed and at which Geoff had no cell service, which wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't needed to be on call for work (which is a whole other blog), so we were stuck. I took control and determined that our day of rest would not be ruined, since i knew we could go home, where food and wine and bathrooms were accessible, sit in the front yard with our books and use the hose if things got hot. Genius plan. And it finally caught on. This is how we came to recognize that, one of the many amazing things I bring to the table in this marriage is the ability to come up with a Strong Plan B.


So we sat out in the yard, listened to music, read, ate lunch, drank a bit too much wine (the only downfall of my Strong Plan B) and enjoyed the day.


(Don't worry mom, we didn't really drink this many. Not in one afternoon, anyway.)

Keeping up with the Neighbors

In our welcome packet at the villa there was, as you can imagine, plenty of information about wine tastings and local vineyards. There was also a very interesting piece of news about one of our neighbors. Apparently, the guy up the street makes his own wine and will sell it to you for 4 euro with his own label, and 2 euro if we dont care about it having his label. And that this was a very cheap way to drink a lot of local Italian wine. Which of course, we intended to do.

One day we drove past the house and saw this lovely woman leaning in the window. She was amazing and I couldn't stop taking her picture. Even made Geoff back up so we could drive by and I could take more. Well, she caught us taking pictures, so Geoff very quickly turned it into us being interested in the wine. The lady of the house (not her friend whose picture I couldn't stop taking) said that yes, this was indeed the place where we could buy wine but that they were all out, and only had enough for themselves. She asked how much we wanted and we said just a bottle to try and she told us to come back in 45 minutes when her partner would be in from the fields and she'd ask him. First of all...he had to come IN FROM THE FIELDS. Which was so rustic and Italian and old school and "Little House on the Prairie" only better, we could hardly stand it. So we headed home and came back at the appointed time.

When we arrived and walked up to the window, the family was sitting down at dinner in the kitchen. The lady recognized us and greeted us, explaining that she'd told her partner about us and apparently he'd said that if the wife or the girlfriend was really pretty, he'd give us the bottles for free, but he wanted to see me first. (Made me wish I'd done my hair and put on some makeup). So he came over to check me out. He was probably in his late 60s easly 70s, thin, white hair, suntanned face and wearing a thin white tshirt and cut off demin shorts. I loved the look of him instantly. He took one look at us and started talking very quickly in Italian to the woman. Apparently he said Geoff was so handsome that was enough to get us the wine for free. Whew! Thank God for my gorgeous husband! Really takes the pressure off a girl. They asked if we wanted red or white and we said we'd love to try one of each if they could spare them. They did and we thanked them profusely and told them we were on our luna de miele (honeymoon). At that, the woman shared the news with her partner and promptly pushed another huge bottle of red wine into our hands and with a very knowing look told us to really enjoy ourselves.

It was by far one of the most memorable and just....really Italian-feeling moments of our trip. That and when another couple in the neighboorhood stopped us on our way back from the bakery one morning. They just stopped us to chat, even though they barely spoke any English at all. We had about a five minute conversation with them, even though neither of us really spoke the other's language. I think we talked about the weather and we told them we were on our honeymoon and they (we think) asked where we were from. It was completely lovely even though I mostly have no idea what they said. Another favorite Italian moment was when the guy at the gas station asked if we were on vacation, and we said, "si - la luna de miele" and he got very excited for us and wished us "multi figlio"- many sons. Please. Does it get better than that?

Anyway, back to the neighbors wine. We promptly went home and cooked ourselves some dinner at the villa. Geoff made a very impressive Caprese salad.


Geoff's reaction to just how good it was...

We had pasta bolognese and tried the neighbor's wine. This is my reaction.


We think maybe it had gone bad. We tried all three bottles, just in case it was a fluke thing. But all three were pretty bad. The only bad wine in all of Italy, I believe. But a great story.