Thursday we got up early and went to see David at the Galleria di Accademmia. He was beautiful as were many of the other statues there. I always feel emotional when I see the magnitude of this statue and how perfectly carved he is. Michelangelo understood the human body so incredibly well and was able to portray it through stone. Incredible. We visited a couple of the rooms at this gallery, but left in fairly short time to go and see the Galleria dei Uffizzi. I had not gotten to this gallery last time as you need an appointment time to buy a ticket and enter, or you stand in line for hours. We got everything needed and saw so many wonderful pieces of art and sculpture. We stayed for a couple of hours and though our feet were killing us, we kept going into yet more rooms to see the art. So absolutely wonderful these pieces are. I think my favourite two pieces, were the piece by Michelangelo depicting several of my favourite tarots cards, and the piece by Carravaggio which was the slaying of a husband. So emotional and capturing. There were many many more amazing pieces there, but these two are really inspiring to me. Before we went to the museums, mom and I made it to the famour Firenze (Florence) marcato. We bought some leather gifts for Graziano and Gabriella, as well as mom buying a beautiful purse for herself and some other gifts too. It was great to see the market again, but it can get quite tiring once you're in there.
Friday, we got up early to catch the bus for our tour to Sienna, San Gimignano, Montereggioni, and some beautiful Chianti landscape. We decided that this was the way to go after so much time on our feet yesterday. Tuscany is such a beautiful region with lots of wonderful wine, oil and vinegars to try. Mom could then see so many more towns, without us having to traipse around forever.
Our first stop was San Gimignano, a little medieval town on the top of a mountain. The streets were super narrow with tall buildings along either side. If you walked to the edge of one of the streets that you crossed, you got a wonderful view of the countryside below. This town was built to fend off attacks from either Sienna or Florence. They were, and still are a little, rivals. I’m sure that if one attended a football game between these two teams, there would most certainly be some heated emotions. We walked around the town for a couple of hours taking photos and enjoying the ancient architecture we passed. Then we stopped yet again, for our favourite, cappuccino. Every bar does their cappuccino’s differently so it’s kind of cool to try as many as possible.
Next stop was the winery close to San Gimignano, where we were seated in a large room at tables, with wine casks lining the walls around us. Here we had an included lunch and learned about wine, wine etiquette, different olive oils and vinegars. This winery was very interesting as it is family run, and not only makes the items I listed, but is a school for Sommeliers. It passed through my mind that it would be a fantastic experience for me to attend these classes, learn about wine and practice my Italian all at the same time. I took their literature to look into it later. I am excited about what I might do in three years from now, when I think I will retire. So many ideas and choices!
The wine we tried was all really good, about six different kinds, including a dessert wine at the end of the meal. The most amazing thing we tasted was a tartufa oil, which is cold pressed olive oil with wild truffle mushrooms in it. This was fantastic and tasted so good drizzled over pasta. You don’t cook with this oil, it is only for taste at the end of cooking a meal. It is to die for. Mom bought one bottle for herself and we bought another one to give to Gabriella and Graziano. We knew that both of them would enjoy it and it is the type of thing that people don’t buy every day. It is certainly a wonderful treat on food. Apparently, they have had a shortage of these truffles because the boars search them out and eat them before they are collected by the winery.
We boarded the tour bus again and off we went to Sienna. This is another beautiful town where one of Italy’s two patron saints is honoured. Santa Caterina. We were given these radios with an earpiece and met by a woman there who took us on a guided walking tour of the city. She was really knowledgable and told us many interesting facts about the city, its history and the buildings we looked at. She took us to Piazza il Campo, where every August, they run the horses and one horse wins. Each region of the surrounding area is represented by one horse so the competition is fierce. The winning region gets a banner or shield which goes up all over the city to celebrate. We thought it would be so cool to see this some time. The photo below shows a picture brochure of the piazza when the horses run, that the guide showed us.
After the guided walking tour, we had some free time. Mom and I found a gelato place, bought some gelato, and sat on a wall to rest our weary bones and eat gelato. All the walking from yesterday and today was catching up with us, but we were both happy and enjoying ourselves. We’ve both noticed that our strength and stamina, mom’s particularly, has improved over the past couple of weeks. She is such a trooper and so good to go.
Our last stop was Montereggioni, a fortress town on a hill. Since we got delayed in Sienna due to a random police stop to check the bus, we only had a half hour in this town. It was cute, but not nearly as nice as San Gimignano. I walked up to take some photos, and mom opted to find the rather far bathroom, and meet me back at the entrance. It was quite a steep climb up to the town and our last stop after really booking it around Sienna. All the people on the tour were really tired and quite a few stayed on the bus for this stop.
We got back to Florence around 8 pm, did a bit of grocery shopping to buy sandwich makings for our journey back the next day, then sat at a restaurant near our hotel, and ate wonderful pizza. The pizza’s were as big as the plate, but super thin. I had a Margarita pizza which is just cheese, tomato sauce and a huge bud of basil. It was delicious with hot pepper oil on it, my favourite. Mom had a fungi pizza which as you probably guessed, is mushroom. We packed it in after that, tired, and happy. The next day we had to get up in good time to catch our train to Rome. Florence, Venice, Sienna, San Gimignano, Montereggioni, and Chianti were wonderful and we enjoyed all of them.
Our trip back to Pescara went really well. We took the fast train which is called the Frecciargenta, meaning silver arrow. I bought the tickets from the automated machine in the station the night before. It is a great way to avoid the line ups at the ticket counters. In Rome, we found our bus at the Tiburtina station, hopped on and were back in Pescara in two hours. It was really a stress free journey back with no glitches.
I needed to go to the computer place to see if my broken adapter had come in yet, but since we arrived in Pescara at around 2 pm, everything was closing up for siesta time, so mom and I decided to go to Berardo Bar for the best gelato. It truly is the best gelato we have had yet. I had pistachio, almond, and lemon. All three were so great. Mom had a different three flavours, that I can’t now remember, but were also really good. We met the owner, Achille, who chatted with us for a while and allowed us to leave our heavy backpacks and bags there while we went to the computer place. He was really nice to do so, and it was greatly appreciated.
Since we still had some time to kill, we walked to the beach and found a beach bar to sit and have a glass of wine at. It was amazing to sit there in 27 degree weather, in October and drink wine while watching people suntan on the beach. Soon it was time to check out the computer place so we walked over there to find out the part still hadn’t come in. Oh well, not a huge issue, as I do have the Italian one that works well and can still function with that one. I’ll have to go back some other time to see. They will text me on the Italian cell phone I have, when it arrives.
We caught the train to Pineto and walked over to see Graziano and Gabriella. We had called them to tell them we were coming back on Saturday, and our approximate arrival time. Gabriella made us supper which was a fantastic veal, with fava beans, lightly salted, arugala with tomatoes and cooked carrots. Everything was so delicious. She could easily open her own restaurant, but she is so humble and doesn’t think it’s anything. How wrong she is! After supper we sat and chatted for a while before going to bed. Mom and I didn’t sleep very well the night before as there was a lot of street noise that could be heard in our room, plus a few guys were in the common area talking loudly until quite late.
Yesterday, we got up, had breakfast with our friends, then mom went down for a nap, and I went out for a long walk with Graziano and Gabriella. We walked by the beach and it was really hot outside. I needed to walk in the shade as it was that hot. We meandered back to their place, had some lunch which Gabriella whipped up in no time. How she does that I will never know. In the span of a half hour, she prepared about six dishes for lunch. She made gnocchi, leeks, salad, and the remaining yummy veal. She also made this delicious eggplant lightly coated in crumbs and then fried. It is apparently a Calabrian dish and wow, was it tasty. She wanted us to try it as it is quite different than anything usual, and resembles a piece of meat rather than eggplant. She is so sweet to go to so much effort for us. We are really enjoying getting to know them and we all share our company so easily. It is really fun.
Later, they drove us back to Atri and we took a walk around the city together. Walking with them is so cool because they know so much about the city and tell us places to visit and tidbits about buildings and people and the history of the town. There was a free theatre performance going on in the evening in the little theatre, but they didn’t want to stay for it. Graziano thought because it was free, it would be too crowded and not worth it. Gabriella told us to check it out, so we did, but the theater was already full and it was super hot, so we didn’t stay. It would have been fun to see that show even if we couldn’t fully understand the language. In any case, we got to see the theatre that is usually closed and not available to look at, so that was cool.
Today, we got up slowly, enjoying having our separate rooms back, and gathered up our laundry to do. That took us a good part of the morning as we decided to take it to the lavanderia down the hill and do it all at once as it had kind of piled up on us. It was a great errand and all of our laundry was done in one fell swoop. On our way back, we stopped to buy some porchetta, vegetables, and ground beef. We ate the porchetta, which was way better than the last time we got it, as we went to the place that Graziano told us about. I had it with fresh arugala, tomatoes and pepperincino flakes. Mom had bread dipped in olive oil and vinegar with her pork, along with tomatoes. Then we took a nap, arose, and caught up on our blogs. Now we will go to the piazza to catch the free WiFi, and possibly go to our favourite little pizza place at the end of our street. A great six days with lots of excitement.
Hope all of you are well. I will try to keep up daily so as not to write a novel. Thanks for reading and take care of yourselves.
