geriandlennyblog: TUESDAY, MAY 24th – Lucca to Volterra and San Gimignano

TUESDAY, MAY 24^th – Lucca to Volterra and San Gimignano – another Tuscan Adventure!

According to Lenny, this was going to be a short half day adventure, leaving the house about 9:00 a.m. and hoping to get back by around 3:00 p.m. but as has been our practice, we didn’t arrive back home until 5:30. It is now 8:30 and we are first thinking about getting ready to go out to dinner. In this region of Italy, the restaurants don’t begin opening until about 8:00.

Our drive south to these two cities took us through hills and valleys that were completely different than what we saw yesterday. This was even more spectacular. Hard for us to realize how easy that was said given everything we have seen in our first three days in Tuscany. We saw olive trees and wine vineyards where ever we looked. There were also large farm areas. But the trees, hills and farm houses made this look special. Also the cities were high up in these beautiful mountains. The road from Lammari to our first city, Volterra, was what we would call country roads with lots of curves. We did see some areas near Pisa that were new. That is new in housing and new in roads. There were also some areas with new buildings, but they were a small percent of the drive time. If one remembers the book/movie Under The Tuscan Sun, well this is what we experienced. The entire day reminded us of the movie and the sun and blue sky helped to reinforce that.

Volterra has a new section with lots of shops and restaurants and an older part dating back to the 13^th century. As has been the case, you cannot drive into the older section of any of these cities. You have to park outside the city and walk in and generally up. There is a Roman theater here that dates from the 1^st century. We are almost taking these historical dates for granted now. This is the first city where we have parked underground, and, of course, we had to pay.

Our next stop was San Gimignano. It’s a very small walled city and has been nicknamed “The Manhattan of Tuscany” since there are a series of tall rectangular somewhat modern looking towers around the castle. There are 14 today but there were originally 72 of them. We decided that it was time to try the vegetable bread soup which the area is famous for and it was worth it! $12 US for a bowl that we shared and then a ½ litre of white wine to go with it. We sat at a little outdoor café enjoying our soup and taking a much needed break. Our hamstrings are feeling the stress of the climbing that we have been doing. We got back home about 5:30, rested, showered, changed for dinner and we were set to go.

Our dinner tonight was one of the best we have had in the region and the “getting there”, even though we had found it once before when it was closed, was by far one of the most frustrating. Betsy, our GPS, failed us, the signs pointing us in the direction of the restaurant failed us, the many locals that we stopped for directions, given only through a series of pointing and Italian that we didn’t understand one word of, failed us. After about an hour of going round and round, we were so close but so far away, we finally found it. The address in Trip Advisor was wrong and the address in our GPS was wrong. Despite this harrowing experience, we were so glad that we took one last stab at finding it. By the time we arrived, it was 10:00 p.m. We were greeted by the friendly staff and seated. Our waiter/ owner, actually spoke excellent English and he presented us with a menu in English as well; however, there is nothing “touristy” about this lovely restaurant and we would highly recommend it to anyone. Our meal started with an excellent appetizer plate for two, made especially for the two of us as we requested a vegetarian selection. It consisted of: fried polenta with a walnut paste, fried ricotta balls, bruschetta with tomato and basil and and another one with a very delicious olive tapenade. . This food was quite different from anything we had before. Lenny ordered a homemade pasta with tomato sauce and I, ordered, upon the advice of the waiter, the filet with whole peppercorns and rosemary and some asparagus. My steak was done perfectly. Lenny’s pasta was so light with broad homemade noodles and a fabulous light red sauce. We met two young American couples who had just come from Cinque Terre and we shared some travel stories with them. The local house wines here were also excellent. For dessert, we broke down and ordered a cream filled beignet smothered in a dark chocolate sauce and accompanied by two very delicious cups of cappuccino and complementary biscotti. We were full but not stuffed. It was a wonderful end to an interesting day in Tuscany. We found our house easily and both of us pretty much simply fell into bed for the night.

AUTICA LOCANDA DI SESTO is located at: vi a Ludovica 1660, 55029 Sisto di Moriano – Lucca – Italy

Tel. +39.0583.578181

www.anticalocandadisesto.it

email: info@anticalocandadisesto.it