Day 4 dawned misty again, obviously that is what it does here in the mornings, but again it all cleared off by 10:00.
My husband shuttled the 7 of us in the car to the train station in Siena. Fortunately this is less than a 10 minute drive from the villa. From here we caught a 20 minute train so Poggibonsi (the gg's are soft then it sounds more Italian). Unfortunately our timing was not great and we waited 50 minutes for the 20 minute bus ride to San Gimigiano.
By the time we got there it was 12:00 and starting to get warm and the streets were quite crowded.
We split in to two groups to explore. We found a side alley which led to an amazing view point over looking the countryside.
Then we wandered around to find somewhere for lunch. We stumbled into a small cafe that served pizza and pannini. The pizza was wonderful very thin and crispy with amazing roasted peppers on it.
The pannini was better than this picture shows, warm and crispy and the tomatoes were full of flavour.
They brought a board of small shards of cheese drizzled with balsamic reduction, which you can see the remains of in this picture.
Fortified with lunch we explored a little more around the town and Dave and the boys climbed one of the towers that San Gimigiano is famous for.
The trip back was seamless with very little waiting for connections, for the family anyway, Gay and Cheryl had harder time. They got on the wrong bus in Siena and in desperation ended up taking a taxi and arrived back at 8:00!
When they arrived back we had dinner on the deck again. I grilled some pork chops in the grill pan marinated in a little olive oil, salt and rosemary and served on a bed of arugula and drizzled with balsamic vinegar.
With this I served fettuccine tossed with fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, tomato passata and some jugo red wine.
To accompany all this I made some of my husbands favourite, celery and parmazan cheese drizzled with olive oil and lemon.
Another good meal enjoyed with local wine on the deck.
My husband shuttled the 7 of us in the car to the train station in Siena. Fortunately this is less than a 10 minute drive from the villa. From here we caught a 20 minute train so Poggibonsi (the gg's are soft then it sounds more Italian). Unfortunately our timing was not great and we waited 50 minutes for the 20 minute bus ride to San Gimigiano.
By the time we got there it was 12:00 and starting to get warm and the streets were quite crowded.
We split in to two groups to explore. We found a side alley which led to an amazing view point over looking the countryside.
Then we wandered around to find somewhere for lunch. We stumbled into a small cafe that served pizza and pannini. The pizza was wonderful very thin and crispy with amazing roasted peppers on it.
The pannini was better than this picture shows, warm and crispy and the tomatoes were full of flavour.
They brought a board of small shards of cheese drizzled with balsamic reduction, which you can see the remains of in this picture.
Fortified with lunch we explored a little more around the town and Dave and the boys climbed one of the towers that San Gimigiano is famous for.
The trip back was seamless with very little waiting for connections, for the family anyway, Gay and Cheryl had harder time. They got on the wrong bus in Siena and in desperation ended up taking a taxi and arrived back at 8:00!
When they arrived back we had dinner on the deck again. I grilled some pork chops in the grill pan marinated in a little olive oil, salt and rosemary and served on a bed of arugula and drizzled with balsamic vinegar.
With this I served fettuccine tossed with fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, tomato passata and some jugo red wine.
To accompany all this I made some of my husbands favourite, celery and parmazan cheese drizzled with olive oil and lemon.
Another good meal enjoyed with local wine on the deck.
awesome gillian. reading these posts every morning on the M60 bus on 125th street in manhattan on my commute to work. loving them! ENJOY!
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