Italy Adventure: Day 5 Today we slept late...in our cozy castle room. When we managed to drag ourselves out from under all our blankets, we got ready and drove to the hill town of Cortona...another beautiful walled city in Tuscany. We stopped for lunch at Osteria Del Teatro...sliced local meats and stuffed zucchini, Chianina (local beef) and porcini pici, farfalle butterflies pasta. During lunch there was a very large and very boisterous Italian birthday party for an elderly man...lots of singing and clapping. Such passion!! Then we drove to Montepulciano...aka the city of Volterra, at least thats what they called it in the Twilight movie. (There is a city called Volterra but thats not where the movie was filmed.) And yes, I made Reaves stand in front of the tower door like Edward. :) Movie location aside, I think this is my favorite of all the walled cities. Its vistas are...breathtaking doesnt fully describe the beauty here. So fill in the blank with your choice of a better word. Im at a loss. While we were there, a wedding had just ended in the beautiful old church in the town square...pictures being taken on the front stairs. Then they moved the wedding party to the opposite side of the piazza for the reception complete with a string quartet. Fabulous! Before leaving Montepulciano we went down what seemed to be hundreds of stairs into the de Ricci wine cellar built below the city. Huge barrels (at least 10 feet tall) lined the walls of the huge cellar...its ceiling more than twice that height. An awesome sight to see! We even sat for a bit to taste three of their signature wines. Then we left the city and returned to our castle on the hill. Once again we had dinner with our new friends from Nashville, Wendy and Bill Heard. Dinner was cooked by Salvatore, the owner of the castle, and served by his son, Anthony. The highlight of dinner for me was the rosebud pasta...lasagna ribbons stuffed with prosciutto and cheese, rolled into rosebuds and covered in cream. Need I say more? After dinner, Anthony told us all about his family, how they came to own the castle, the restoration project, and the artifacts unearthed during the process. We even found out our room used to be a kitchen...hence the oven in our room. However, our bathroom was the actual kitchen and where our bed now sits was an area broken into 3 sleeping quarters separated by walls for the cooks. Wow!! Talk about claustrophobia! We finished our night as we did last night...sharing a bottle of wine with our new friends from Nashville. Today I can truly say I felt more a part of Italy rather than being just a tourist. We felt included in a surprise birthday party, a glorious wedding, the history of an ancient castle and a growing friendship. What a gift Italy has been! Salute!
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 22:39:18 +0000
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