A month in Tuscany day 14 - halfway through feeling like home

One couple left for Monaco early in the morning and another couple took the bus to another hill town and I walked in to Siena with the two new arrivals from yesterday, and Carl who is always game to walk into Siena. As usual I could not help taking some more pictures of the movie like scenery.

Ernie was wanting some Italian black T shirts and I was able to take him to the a store where my sons had bought several.  I then bought a pair of sunglasses to replace the ones that I had lost :(. By this time it was 1:00 and time for lunch, I took them to the same restaurant that we had lunch on the first day at.  I ordered cut chicken? This is what arrived.

A month Tuscany day 13 - We adopt a villa cat

I woke this morning with the sound of purring in my ear, we seem to have adopted a large skinny grey tabby cat.  The owner does not recognize it, and fears it has been abandoned. It does have a flea collar, seems very domesticated and loves to be held and sit on your lap.  After 24 hours of hanging around with us we broke down and bought cat food!

After Breakfast and getting some of the necessities done around the place, Dave and I walked all the way in Siena.  This is a good walk and necessary to counteract all the not healthy things I am doing to my body.  We stopped in The Campo (main square) for a cup of coffee and people watching.

I realize that sitting having coffee in the main tourist attraction in a city is not going to be the cheapest cup of coffee, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and this is what we did.  After a nice sit in the shade, we explored around a little more, and were just heading back to go home for lunch when we saw a small restaurant in a back street which caught both of ours eyes.  So we decided to stop for lunch.

A month in Tuscany day 12 - market day in Siena

Wednesday is Market day in Siena, so 5 of us set off on foot and walked all the way from the villa to the market which is in the old town about 3km of very hilly terrain, so good for working off some of the wine, cheese and gelato which I have been consuming. We arrived at the market and were immediately overwhelmed by the size of it.  There were stalls selling clothes, nightwear, pets, leather goods food and almost anything else you can imagine.

It was quite crowded and so much to see, so we decided to divide and conquor.  Lisa and I went off to find food.  We stumbled upon the food section near one end of the market and immediately started sampling cheese and salami.

We bought the cheese with the black speckles.  Those black speckles are truffle yum! We also bought some salami.

A month in Tuscany day 11 - My family leaves

I can not remember the last time that my husband, two sons and I spent over a week together, it has to be years.  We also had my Father with us for this whole time as well, it has been good to reconnect and spend some time together as a family.  But today the boys and my Father headed back to Florence and then to fly back to Canada, hopefully this has been a trip that they will remember for a long time.

In the morning Nicholas Mark and I walked the 1.5 km down to the local stores to pick up some bread, butter and shared a cappaccino at the local cafe. The bread that we picked up was used to make tuscan sausage hot dogs for their last meal at the villa.

After we dropped them off we went to the Co op to pick up a few items that we needed. As we drove home the heavens opened and it poured rain for about 15 or 20 minutes then cleared up again.

All the others were out and about 2 in Florence, 3 in Siena and 2 cycling around the countryside.  They all avoided the rain by being on a bus or a coffee shop so no drowned rats that day.

Darren was making mushroom risotto for dinner, I had picked up both dried and amazing fresh porcini mushrooms for him.  I am afraid I do not have a picture of the finished risotto, but here is a picture of it in the making.

A month in Tuscany day 10 - the wood fired pizza oven

Day 10 the last full day with my family.  My husband drove me, Lois and my Father to a very small town called Monteriggioni, which is about 13 km North of Siena. This is a very small walled town or village really, you can walk across the whole town in about 5 minutes.

At the entrance there was square with a couple of restaurants with shady umbrellas, but we chose a restaurant to the right of the square that had a garden at the back.  This was very pleasant and the menu was full of Florentine specialities.  Dave ordered ribollita (Tuscan bread soup) this was delicious and more like a stew than a soup as it was so thick.

My Father ordered grilled porcini mushroom cap.

Porcini mushrooms are in season and there were several specials using them.  Lois ordered porcini mushroom salad which she was extremely pleased with.

A month in Tuscany day 9 - The hoards descend

The morning dawned quietly with the boys sleeping in until after 10:00, and I enjoyed a leisurely morning doing laundry.  The washing machine has been a bit of a trial, but I believe we have if figured out now, and have determined that it is not a combo washer and dryer but but just a washing machine.  Therefore the drying is done on drying racks in the sun.

For lunch I made some chicken vegetable noodle soup from the stock made from the chicken the other night.

After lunch we went down to pick up the first two couples who arrived at the train station with in 20 minutes of each other one couple from Rome, the other from Cinque Terra.  We brought them back to the villa for the obligatory tour and drink on the deck.  The afternoon passed pleasantly swimming and chatting on the deck in beautiful warm sun shine.  Then at about 5:30 a large cloud came over and suddenly the heavens opened.

A month in Tuscany day 8 - A road trip

We are now heading in to our second week in the villa and it is feeling like home now.  Day at dawned beautiful and sunny and a hot air balloon was drifting low over us.

Currently there are only 6 of us here all family and we decided to go visit a couple of other small towns in the area. So after breakfast we drove south from Siena through the countryside, which changed quite dramatically a few miles into the trip.

There were far fewer trees, or any vegetation for that matter. Most of the land was newly overturned earth, punctuated by the dark spikes of cypress trees, lining the lanes and driveways to peoples properties.  By the many bales of hay that we saw we assumed that hay had been growing here and it was newly harvested. Looking North we could still see Siena.

The first town that we came to was Asciano. A banner hanging over the entrance to walls declared that 2014 was there 1,300 anniversary, apparently they became a town in the 714.  It made Port Moody's 100 anniversary in 2013 seem a little lame, though we all have to start somewhere.

This was a small town with little or no tourists, the only ones that we saw, were arriving by bike! We walked through the city wall and came upon a small square with a shady spot that was calling us for a coffee.

So we all had some coffee and couple had a pastry, then wandered around the narrow streets for about half an hour. There was a beautiful simple Romanesque church which my Father would appreciate just by the entrance.

We then drove on to a much larger more touristic town about 30 km away called Montalcino, we first glimpsed it as we were driving towards it, and it did look spectacular perched high up on a hill.