To Rome, Thurs, Apr 6

We get up today and check out of our Villa. We point ourselves towards Rome. I have forgotten to turn ‘Avoid Toll Roads’ off so we find ourselves winding our way back through Pienza first. I suddenly remember and turn Toll Roads back on and it turns us around completely and we repeat the first half hour. Probably should have let it be. But we finally get on the Autostrada (Toll Road) and head towards Rome. A brief stop at another AutoGrille for a bite for breakfast. We love AutoGrille as it is not your average highway service store, but a full on restaurant with really good food!

Then something fun occurs! We spot a medieval city on top of a cliff and it looks so interesting that we leave the highway in search of it! It turns out to be the town of “Orte” and we finally get there after a few wrong turns because we don’t know the name until we get there. We drive up through very narrow medieval streets like several towns we have seen. At times we creep along at about 1 or 2 mph because the road is so narrow and we only have a few inches on each side and we even have to make a few ‘K’ turns to be able to get into some streets!

Bur we find a lovely restaurant at the top and have more authentic Italian pasta for lunch! If you have never eaten Al Denti Italian Pasta in Italy, you are missing out! The people are friendly and love Californians too!

But this was just a side excursion to use up a couple of hours and it was a fun one! We move on and make it back to the Autostrada and drive the last hour into Rome. The driving is somewhat hectic and I never thought I would be driving in Rome! But I only plan to drive in and park the car for 2 days until we leave Rome! We’re on foot from here! It turns out we find a parking garage only one block from where we’ll be staying and that is very convenient!

So we get into our place, the “Metronia Guest House”, and it is the tiniest place so far. It is a room in what appears like a boarding house. We do have our own bath but the kitchen is shared among 5 rooms! But it is clean and seems comfortable so all is good.

We are told it is walking distance to the Colosseum and now I am thrilled to have that Italian sim card in my phone as the navigator works for both driving AND walking! Sure enough, the Colosseum is less than a mile away straight down the road our room is on! We get there and attempt to buy tickets to enter, but alas! The first tickets that are available are for a week from now! Oh well, we photograph it from the outside and our cameras do not complain!

We then come across a vendor selling Hop On Hop Off Bus tickets and we purchase 2, good for 24 hours. We have to walk a half mile to the closest bus stop and wait about 20 minutes before a bus comes along. We get on and are told that because of the hour, the bus will not make it back to this spot but will end at the Rome Train Station! We get on anyway because what’s an adventure without lots of adventure? We get close up views of lots of old buildings including the “Wedding Cake” and it is a fun trip. We are on the top open air level and I left my warm hat in our room. Brrr! But it is nowhere near as cold as it was in Tuscany the last 5 days!

We walk around and find a pizzeria and we order a pie and a couple glasses of wine and all is good again! Then we walk across the street to the train station and navigate our way through the huge terminal, stopping and asking random workers how to get on the local train to the Colosseum? We finally figure it out and find a ticket machine that allows us to do our transaction in English! Whoopee! We buy another pair of 24 hour train tickets so we are good to go for transportation until tomorrow night!

Navigating the Metro Trains is not difficult and we can recognize the name of the station we want so we board a train in the right direction! We get off at the Colosseo Station (Colosseum) and sure enough, we are right there at night! The Colosseum is spectacular at night and our cameras are in their own element again! Too bad there is some form of construction going on for about three quarters of the way around the building. I’m hoping to do a little creative editing and disguise most of the construction!

Then it is a 17 minute walk to our room and it caps our energy for the night! So back in the room to get our photos uploaded and the words of this Blog written and it is time for slumberland! See you all tomorrow!

See you all Tomorrow!

Trequanda, Apr 5 Truffle Hunt

Today is the reason we booked this trip in the first place! But our hunt isn’t until 3PM. So we get up at 9AM and head out to visit Pienza which was cut short a couple days ago because of our small bout with food poisoning! We visit the Duomo at the top of the city and find breakfast. As we walk around, we find a wine tasting in the center of town. So we try out more Tuscan wines!

Then we head out and check out a castle that we have passed by several times and this time we drive in and it turns out to have the best wine tasting of the trip! FREE! so we taste several wines and I buy a bottle of their best one which is only 21 Euros! We can’t believe our luck! Then we go back to our villa for an hours rest before our hunt starts!

We finish our visit to the castle, which has some fun statues that are clearly very old along with some other very old relics and we drive away past an olive orchard!

Promptly at 3PM, we meet Andrea, our Hunter, and only one other couple is with us with their 10 year old daughter. They are Leon, Vera and daughter Marie from Tarzana, CA, a mere hour drive from where we live! We’ll need to stay in touch! We follow Andrea down the road a kilometer or two and park. Andrea releases her truffle dog, Mia, but the dog answers to the name “Puppy” which is only a puppy but seems to know it’s stuff. We walk off into the woods following Puppy and soon enough, she is digging at the ground. Yes! A truffle! I will go into more depth on the kinds of truffles but for now, we have found truffles! All in all, the puppy finds 47 grams of truffles (as weighed later) which is about 23 Euros worth, plenty enough for dinner for 4! Our hunter throws in a black truffle she found this morning and we have 60 grams!

There are 3 basic kinds of Truffles, Marzuolo (found in the spring and the ones we find today!), Tartufo Estivo O Scorzone (Black Truffles, found in the summer and fall mostly) and Tartufo Bianco (White Truffles, found in the fall into winter)

Andrea gives the truffles to our chef, Giovanna, for the evening, and we all agree to meet at 7:15PM for dinner. So we go back to our room and relax until then. We have a couple hours and I even get a nap in! We all meet at the agreed time and are ushered into the dining room and get seated at the table. Our truffle mates are a Russian couple, Leon, Vera and daughter Marie, that happen to live in Tarzana, CA and we get along famously! So much so that those of you that live local to us may even get to meet them one day as they are now on our invite list!

The meal is fabulous and every course includes truffles! We ask what the courses are but no one speaks English! So the photos will have to suffice! Dessert is the only course that doesn’t use truffles and we feign mock disappointment and everyone laughs! Then they serve us Grappa, which Elee and I have been dying to try. It is a sweet Anisette, licorice flavored after dinner drink, which is interesting but I probably won’t order again! Strong!

So it’s back to the room to write this blog and retire. A fire lit, we kick back and turn on Netflix and turn in!

Trequanda, Apr 4

Today we wake, much refreshed from yesterday’s illness scare! What we both thought might be another Covid scare, it turns out we think we had a short bout of food poisoning from some bad ground beef (that we watched being ground just for us!). So we’re back in good shape and we have breakfast and head off in search of adventure! We find Pienza and tour a little bit of the city and end up in Montalcino for a wine tasting and tour that came with our current lodging. Another old winery and we are very amazed at what we see in their cellars. Fattoria dei Barbi!

The doorways are barely large enough for a human to fit through and I have to ask our guide, Irene, how they got wine barrels in the cellar that are 8-10 feet wide and as tall? She tells me they assembled the barrels in place! Over 100 of them! We then all go into the restaurant and taste some of their wines. Good in their own right but not California wine by a long stretch!

Our tour guide, Irene, is one of the most personable we have met. In the wine cellars, she takes us into a set of rooms that store wines as old as 100 plus years! We ask her if she will open one and she smiles at us. Not to be done but hey, it was worth the ask!

We drive on and find ourselves in the heart of town in Montalcino. we tour the Duomo we find there and acquire more ceiling photos, LOL. As we step out, we see a couple of people walking down a path from what looks like a castle and I ask them what is up there. “I don’t know, I am from Montelcino!” Hey wait, we are IN Montelcino! Oh well, shaking my head, we walk on. The Tramontana winds make it feel extremely cold here! We drive away again and soon find ourselves in Siena. Another interesting old little town! We find yet another place to have a wine tasting and we indulge again! Caffe di Fondesco!

So we find our way back to our Villa after driving through the Orcia Valley and take a couple hour nap. Then, a little after 7PM, we head out in search of dinner. Have I mentioned that in Italy, restaurants close at 3PM and open back up after 7PM for no one goes out to dinner before that! We find a place called “Piccolo” and we both have a seafood pasta dish that is fantastic and cooked perfectly! We are the only patrons in the restaurant and the owner comes and chats with us about life in general and the conversation is fun!

Then we drive back to our Villa, get a roaring fire going (remember the heating system isn’t working?) and relax for the night with a bottle of good Italian wine!

Good night!

Trequando, Monday Apr 3

Today we get up leisurely and make breakfast. Then we head out to check out Pienza, a half hour away. We get there and easily find a place to park. We are only a block from the Duomo and we easily find our way there and walk around, going inside for a few photos! Every Duomo in Italy has it’s own charm and this one is no different.

We walk around the piazzas that we find and this is an old world charm! But for some reason, I am exhausted on my feet and we opt to go back to our villa and I sleep for most of the day! Elee is feeling under the weather also and we both take a leisure day.

Later in the afternoon, we are both feeling a bit better and we seek out a small restaurant down a small dirt road that we have spotted in our travels and we decide to check it out! It is called, “FicoPazzo” which translates to ‘Crazy Fig’!

We order a tasting menu that includes bruscetta, handmade spaghetti, Roast Rabbit and a panchetta dessert! It is all wonderful especially when you toss in a couple glasses of Italian wine! So we make it back to our villa and will make it an early night!

Trequanda, Sunday, Apr 2

We are in leisure mode now so we wake up when we wake up. Our villa is freezing cold and the heater appears not to be working. So we brave the elements and get our day going. Elee makes breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs! First egg breakfast in Italy! And the coffee we bought in a grocery store last night turns out to be really good cooked in a percolator in the kitchen! Throw a banana in and breakfast is complete!

We eventually get dressed and take a walk around the resort, our cameras busily grabbing photos of the local flowers and plants and they purr happily! Elee whips up some open face sandwiches out of ingredients we bought yesterday and all is good!

We head out and find some wine tasting places. First is “Cantina Contucci” in Montepulciano. Back in the old part of the city that was originally built in the 4th or 3rd century BC (yes, I said BC!), the buildings are medieval and fantastic according to our camera lenses! But don’t believe them, look at the photos for yourself! Okay, so my cameras were right! And you didn’t believe them! Shame on you, LOL

We walk into Cantina Contucci and it is busy. The sommelier sees we have just arrived and steps off to the side and invites us to visit the wine cellar and points the way! We walk into the cellar and my camera snaps at me for not letting it loose! This is fantastic! We first see bottles covered in 1/4 to 1/2 inch of accumulated dust! Wine barrels that are 10 feet tall by 10 feet wide and stacked to fill every crevice of the caves! Literally hundreds of barrels that must each hold 2000 gallons each! And it appears they must have been built in place for there’s no way they would fit through the passageways! And they are all in current use!

By the time our camera lenses are satiated, we arrive back in the tasting room. The people that were here have gone and we are two of only a half dozen people left. So she focuses on us and another sommelier takes on the rest of the patrons. We taste four of their finest wines and I am underwhelmed. Their prices range from 15 Euros to 50 Euros per bottle. Understand that 1 Euro is approximately $1.20. Won’t be buying from any wineries soon, but we’ll keep tasting!

So we move on and find a couple of wine rooms that are closed. We finally find one that we call and it is open and we locate it in an industrial part of town, “Vecchia Cantina”. Gabriel is the sommelier and he treats us to tastings of 4 of his best wines. At least one of them I would love to take home and lay down in my wine room, but this trip we are traveling light with just carry on bags and we won’t be able to take any on the plane. The one that shows promise is still young and the wines we are buying we will drink here. So it defeats the purpose of trying to bring his wine home! Sorry Gabriel, we wish you well!

A storm has taken over the skies for an hour or two and we find a store with a couple more sundries we need while the storm passes. We go back to our Villa where Elee cooks some egg noodles we have bought in the grocery store. She does another fabulous job on dinner and we settle down to eat and enjoy the fire I have lit in the fireplace!

We stopped into a small store that I described yesterday where a local lady translated for us. Both she and the proprietor talked me out of purchasing some expensive wines and I picked up a couple at 15 Euros. I’m drinking one of them right now and it is quite nice!

Well, in closing, since Elee cooked, it is my job to clean the kitchen, so Ciao for now!