Taking a day off!

 

Ciao!

Wow!  It is rather nice, I have to admit, to having a day off! When I got up this morning about 6:30 am, Rwas already hard at work on Caltech business.  As I didn’t want to disturb him, I decided to head out for a walk down the hill to San Biagio Church and back.  Nice and cool outside, and quite a nice hike (especially the return … entirely up hill…) 

Church on Piazza Grande

"City hall"

San Biagio Church

Another view of the town!

Double gates to the city

Lion emblem of Montepulciano

R's leek and lentil soup

My wonderful salad

Wonderful bottle of wine!

R's pics with wild elephant garlic

As it turned out, R needed until almost noon to get everything done that needed doing.  Once he was finished, he showered and then we headed out together (it now being around 12:30 pm) to the Piazza Grande, to catch the hop-on/hop-off bus that goes around town. Turns out, it isn’t really hop-on/hop-off.  It is a narrated 40 minute tour of various town sites.  When we got on, we were at Piazza Grande, and it was quite a crush in the back section until we got back into town, where most of the people got out.  We would have enjoyed staying down at the commercial section, except that that meant we would have had to walk back UP all the way to the department.  And by that time, we were getting hungry, anyway. We checked out the restaurants at Piazza Grande, and basically, everyone had the same menu.  We did keep looking in case something interesting popped up, but inevitably, we ended back up at Piazza San Francisco and “our” spot inside the enoteca/bistrot. As Robert pointed out yesterday, most of the restaurants here are very tourist-oriented, and their menus are basically carbon copies.  Very “Tuscan Tipico” … and I have to say that the menu at E Lucivan Stella (Piazza San Francisco) does have some original things on it.

This time, R started with their incredible leek and lentil soup.  It was, seriously, incredible.  So good, in fact, that R spent the rest of the meal trying to figure out exactly how to make it!  He followed that with the local fat pasta – pici, with a wild elephant garlic sauce.  Wow.  I ordered their house salad – a lovely bowl with radicchio and salad greens, with sliced tomatoes, cheese, and warm bacon on top.  R had Vin Santo (yes, again) for dessert, with their biscotti.  He loves that!  I walked up to the Piazza Grande for my gelato – fortunately, they now have stracciatella and I ordered “cookies” to go with it…wonderful!  We also had a bottle of Vino Nobile de Montepulciano – recommended by Luca (our landlord), who happened to be in the restaurant and who also happens to be in the wine business – which was fabulous!  

Back to the apartment about 4 pm, and R now sound asleep on the couch! It took him about six hours to get everything completed for Caltech, and I’m thinking that this is definitely a day without a car!!  Tomorrow, we are going to taste some wine here in town at two different places and hopefully also get down to San Biagio to take a look around.  (Unfortunately, I was there about 7 am, and they don’t open their doors until 9:30 am …)  So, a very, very short blog today!

Lots of love,

m

xxx