We spent a couple of fabulous, exciting days in Rome and then we started an amazing trip around Italy. Our first trip to Europe and we were armed with absolutely no knowledge of how things worked over there. Although we had a Eurorail pass, lesson #1 was ; we couldn't take a train to Sienna. Buses only thank you very much. While this made no sense to us, we really wanted to see Sienna so there was nothing for it, but to sling our backpacks over our shoulders and head for the bus terminal. The bus trip itself was uneventful but finding our hotel in Sienna was a real adventure. When we got off the bus we couldn't find anyone who spoke English and our Italian was limited to a few phrases, so we wandered around with our packs on our backs on a fairly warm day with absolutely no success for at least 1/2 an hour. We finally found a bench where I got Joani to sit down and guard all of our belongings while I wandered for another 20 minutes looking down every street for our Hotel and trying to find anyone that spoke English, all to no avail.
Finally hot, tired and worn out I went back to where I had left Joani only to find out she had met a very nice couple 2 minutes after I had left her who showed her where our hotel was and she had been waiting the rest of the time for me to return! Turns out the hotel was only 2 blocks from the busstop but nestled in among tall Cyprus trees with a winding driveway you couldn't see from the road.
Only the first amongst many times we were partially, or totally lost in Italy.
It was late in the evening and we had a guided tour of the countryside booked for the next day so we had dinner and retired early for what was probably the best night's sleep we had since we left Canada.
The next morning we were picked up at our Hotel by Roberto, the owner, manager and chief guide of "Tours by Roberto". We had been promised Castles, Monasteries, Medieval towns and Wineries and couldn't wait. Roberto did not disappoint.
We did not see castles the size of Buckingham palace but what we did see were cool for us regardless.
Every building was older than anything we would see in Canada. The Medieval town he took us to was like something out of a storybook,
and the monastery had a religious order of monks that we only saw through windows and archways.
We had a picnic lunch outside on top of a hill in the Tuscan countryside, waited on by an elderly woman who served us cheeses, salamis, pastramis and breads that she and her family had made themselves, as well, we drank homemade wine.
It felt almost dreamlike, something you might see in a movie and even though we normally never eat red meat, we ate some of everything. We were interested in trying all these homemade foods and the last thing we wanted to do was offend this elderly woman who almost immediately was won over by my wife. Joani manages to win over everyone she meets sooner or later. In this instance she got up from the table and started helping the woman serve the lunch and even though this older Italian lady seemed mortified that a guest help serve, Joani insisted and by half way through our meal it began to seem as if the woman had adopted Joani as her daughter. When the meal was over the woman packed up all the leftover meats, cheeses, and breads in paper and gave them to Joani as takeout! We had snacks for the rest of the day. It's not for nothing that I have married the nicest woman in the world!!
In the Afternoon we went for our wine tour. Roberto took us to a winery that concentrated on the main grape of the region Sangiovese, used to make Brunello Di Montalcino.
http://en.abbadiardengapoggio.it/
We spent most of the afternoon with the owners, Father and son, of the winery and while the son ran the winery, the father was the storyteller/entertainer, all spoken in Italian and translated by Roberto.
We were treated to a small meal of bread and antipasto while we tasted wines. We were supposed to try 4 different wines, but the father seemed to be enchanted with Joani and we ended up trying everything in the wine cellar including something that had an alcohol content that made me think of moonshine. When we we were leaving we took a couple of bottles with us
It was late afternoon by the time Roberto got us back to the hotel and we were as I previously stated, very happy with the day we had, but tired and basically planned an early evening dinner and bedtime as tomorrow we would be heading into Sienna to explore what turned out to be one of our favourite places in Italy.
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