Dave and Sara’s Excellent 2018 Adventure

Castles to Terraces

By Dave and Sara on Friday, March 9, 2018

So dinner last night was only OK. It was nice to eat just protein and not a pasta. That being said, Dave woke up in the middle of the night with stomach pains. Maybe the seafood wasn’t good? Luckily, it just cost him a little bit of sleep. When he woke up, the stomach pain was gone.

‘This morning, we hiked up to the Castle Rocca Minore. It is about a 10 minute walk from where we are staying mostly uphill. The castle looks over the entire town of Assisi and has some good views.

From the top we can still see some snow on the top of the hills from the freak snow storm that hit last week. After catching some views, we hiked back down to the town.

Today the sun is actually out and it is nearly 60 degrees. From the wet cold days of before, this basically feels like summer. We grabbed a bottle of wine and some to go focaccia and took it back to our place to sit out on the terrace. We spent the rest of the day up here enjoying the sun.

Tonight we go to dinner at Osteria Piazzetta dell’Erba. Tomorrow we have our longest drive yet to Rome at 3 hours where we will be meeting up with Matt and Anna. We are quite excited!

Italy Road Trip

Francesco I think they mean Francisco

By Dave and Sara on Thursday, March 8, 2018

This morning we woke up with the plan to see the large church built to house the remains of Francesco.

After walking through the town, we made it to the church and queued up our Rick Steve’s guided tour audio and set about the church.

It is quite impressive how large and the number of Frescos here.

Francesco started the Franciscan movement and also appreciated nature including animals.

After the church, Sara wasn’t feeling too hot. The cold we both battled has turned out to be quite a doozy. Therefore, we took a scenic walk back to the apartment and stopped to get the fixings to make some vegetable soup. After lunch, we tried to take it is easy so Sara can rest up and feel better.

Tonight we have to dinner at Ristorante il Vicoletto.

Italy Road Trip

Assisi? Yea I see you.

By Dave and Sara on Wednesday, March 7, 2018

We said goodbye this morning to Montepulciano. Luca, our host, stopped by to see us off and we drove out with sunny skies, off to our next destination in Assisi. Dave was a little relieved to be leaving Montepulciano having convinced himself that it was haunted. Totally understandable given all the old Etruscan tombs directly below the city and the eerie, super heavy fog that rolled in each night we were there.

The drive took about an hour and half, first on Tuscan country roads and then on the highway. It was very beautiful until we got to Perugia which is pretty industrial on the outskirts. We got into Assisi a little before noon. You can see it from the road, stuck on the side of a hill with the Basilica out on the far end. All the buildings are made out of a very light color stone so the town kind of glows white from far away.

After we parked the car we walked around and had lunch in town while we waited for our rental to be ready. The apartment has an incredible view of the castle Rocco Maggiore and also the church of San Rufino. It also had a fireplace so it’s really cozy. Once everything opened again for the afternoon hours we went food shopping for dinner, stopping in to visit St Francis’ birthplace and also had an apertivo at a cute wine bar right next door. Now we are enjoying a fire in the fireplace, the sun setting out the window and making dinner. Tomorrow we are planning to go to the Basilica and maybe the castle.

Italy Road Trip

I Guess We Are Shipping Wine

By Dave and Sara on Tuesday, March 6, 2018

After struggling to find something to eat for lunch yesterday and enjoying our home aperitivo, we headed on the town to find something to eat for dinner. We ended up at Ristorante La Bricola next door to where we ate dinner the first night. To be honest, we were a bit underwhelmed by the food. Additionally, the bottle of wine we got was border line turned, but we waited too long before we both agreed it wasn’t good.

This morning we woke up and saw that a glimmer of hope that the rain would finally subside. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

Luckily for us, we had a fun day planned of wine tasting and eating Italian food so it didn’t matter what the weather was like. Our first stop was Montemecurio just outside of town. When we pulled up, a scruffy teenager with an eye patch wearing sweat pants answered the door and looked at us very confused. Concerned we had pulled up to somebody’s house and not a winery, we started to slowly backup. In broken English, the teenager told us to wait. After waiting outside the front door for two minutes, Irene came out and welcomed us into the house. While it looked like a house, it was indeed the correct place. The wine operation consists of 3 people. One for the field, one for the winery, and one for the office. Irene was an absolute pleasure to taste with. She was quite gregarious and loved talking with us about skiing. She stressed the importance of a bit of grappa before you hit the slopes. Here we tasted 6 bottles of wine include a white and rose which is very rare in this red dominated region. Everything was delicious and so affordable. We ended up walking away with a half case.

After our first tasting, we headed to our lunch reservation in Monticchiello at Osteria La Porta.

Apparently, most people come to this little hill top village just for this restaraunt. We were not disappointed. Between the bacalla appetizier or the Cacio Pepe Gnocchi, everything was so good. The atmosphere was also quite fun with a young temptress sitting behind us attempting to seduce the young waiter. This included passing notes and lots of giggling. Sara said she could have dressed cuter. The staff was also quite generous here, they even gave us our half liter of wine for free.

After lunch, we headed back to the apartment for a quick rest before our next tasting. Dave fell asleep during this time for a few minutes, because as you know, tasting wine is exhausting. Refreshed and ready to go, we headed up to Gattevechi which is located right in town.

We met Daniela who is the one of three siblings who run the winery. In addition to working in the family business, Daniela used to teach Italian to foreign students at a school in Montepulciano so she was very excited about speaking with Sara and complimented her quite a bit on her Italian. They also spoke about their shared interest in vintage Cinecitta films. Similar to other places in town, they had an extensive cellar that dates back to 300 BC.

After touring their small crypt, we tasted the wines. Again, everything was quite good. Daniella offered to help us ship all of our wine back including the bottles we purchased at other locations.

All in all, we ended up with two cases.

During our tasting, it finally stopped raining and the sun came out. We now sit in our apartment for one last night and are looking at a beautiful sunset. Tonight we are going to cook in.

Tomorrow we head to Assisi.

Italy Road Trip

When it rains it pours, wine

By Dave and Sara on Monday, March 5, 2018

Today we took the morning off and got up late. Sara finally got the cold that Dave is just getting over so we took it easy. After getting up and having a coffee, we took a drive through the area surrounding Montepulciano, it’s very scenic even with the weather not being great (still raining). There’s a lot of sheep, some horses and cows and tons of wine. It’s much gentler than the northern areas we’ve been in and the soil (per Dave) is red clay with limestone.

We did a wine tasting at a family owned winery called Boscarelli. The local terroir is for Vino Nobile di Montepulciano which we learned today has to be a minimum of 70% Sangiovese. As Sangiovese is a very delicate grape most of the fermentation process is done in huge barrels or even in giant concrete tanks which mimics the old Etruscan method of fermenting in terra-cotta. The Rosso di Montepulciano, the Vino Nobile and the Riserva change in their blends and in the fermentation techniques but are all majority Sangiovese. The operation reminded us a lot of the smaller family run wineries we visit in California like Keever and Canard where everyone does a little bit of everything from putting the back labels on bottles bound for the US to sorting bad grapes on the table during harvest.

We looked for restaurants around the winery but couldn’t find anything open close by as it was nearing the end of lunchtime so we came back to Montepulciano. Everything was closed here too but Dave was able to find a sandwich in a bar we split. After resting a while at home we went to another tasting in the cantina directly across the road from where we are staying called De’Ricci. While the the cantinas themselves were really interesting (they start at street level and go all the way down the ancient Estrucan caves deep below the city) the wine was just ok. We had the place all to ourselves and they were running a skeleton crew of just one who poured for us. She was a bit of character and after chatting together for a while she waived our tasting fees.

We are having an aperitivo at the apartment with wine we bought last night at the Locanda dei Nobile and some snacks, including pecorino which is made here (from all those sheep we saw earlier). The wine shop has a super knowledgeable staff and crazy amount of local wine- a fantastic shop that Mitch would love. From the street it just looks like a small wine shop with a sandwich counter but we ended up eating dinner there last night because down the stairs they have a giant, multi level cantina that’s been converted into a really cool restaurant.

Tomorrow we’ve booked a few more wine tastings and a lunch in a neighboring town.

Italy Road Trip

Under the Tuscan Sun

By Dave and Sara on Sunday, March 4, 2018

The sun was shining this morning in Florence as we packed up for our next part of the trip.

There were lots of people out and about enjoying the weather, biking and running. We had a quick breakfast at the hotel and drove out of town in the direction of Siena with the hilltop town of Montepulciano our destination for today. The route out of Florence took us up into the hills on the Oltrearno side of town by the Pitti Palace and then into the Tuscan countryside. We passed lots of wineries and farms, a bike race and some very heavy industrial zones. When Sara spotted San Giminigano from the highway we decided to take a detour and stop there to look around. It was quiet and parking was easy so we spent an hour or so walking around and even had a gelato because the sun was out and it has warmed up considerably.

We got to admire all the towers and medieval alleys pretty much by ourselves. Sara also made this classic Cinecitta tribute short video

Leaving San Giminigano we got back on the highway, passing by Siena and Volterra on our way to Montepulciano. When we got into town our super nice Airbnb host, Lucca met us and caravanned with us up to the apartment because it’s in a restricted traffic area. This town is so cool and the apartment location is great. You enter the town about halfway down the hill and the walls enclose the rest of it around the top of the hill. The apartment is on the edge of town so the view out the windows is down onto the valley and smaller hills. Also, one of the big cantinas producing vino Nobile (the local wine) is literally across the street from the front door. We walked around a little and had lunch in at a very nice place called Le Lodge di Vignola. The plan was to eat dinner in but all the grocery stores in town are closed because it’s Sunday afternoon so we will probably have a light dinner out. Tomorrow the plan is to take a drive through the surrounding country and visit a winery in the afternoon.

Italy Road Trip

I’m Seeing Double

By Dave and Sara on Saturday, March 3, 2018

Last night after we finished our post in the aperitif bar, we headed over to Il Pizzaiuolo for some Pizza. The place was packed and the pizza was delicious. Their house wine even came in a bottle with their name on it.

This morning we woke up early to make it to our appointment at the Academia. Unfortunately, today was forecasted to be another wet day so we bundled up and headed off to our appointment.

When we got there, much to Dave’s surprise, Michalangelo created a 15 foot tall sculpture of his likeness and named it after him.

Attached to the museum was a small room dedicated to musical instruments. There was even a poster for this sweet renaissance metal band. They really rocked the lute we hear.

After the museum, the next goal of the day was to find a barber as Dave’s beard had become a bit out of control. We had a plan on where to go, but when we got there (before it opened) there was already an hour long wait. Luckily, Dave saw a place that was essentially called styles by Toni. When we got there, Dave asked if he spoke English, Toni did not. Sara was nice enough to translate for him and told him exactly what he wanted instead of pranking him saying he wanted a mullet or some other crazy option.

After getting shorn, they headed off to the Medici Chapel to check out some old rich people’s graves. There were also quite a bit of relics in here including many bones and even a finger. Gross.

The Chapel was designed by Michalangelo and had quite a bit of his works. The coolest part was his hand drawn notes on the wall that are still there.

After the chapel we headed to the Officina Profumo – Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella. This was a beautiful rennissance aged perfumeria/pharmacy that has been in continuous operation. It was very beautiful. They even had a potion to help Sara but unfortunately they were all out.

Tonight we are off to eat some Sicilian food and tomorrow we leave Firenze for Montepulciano.

Italy Road Trip

Arting with Dave

By Dave and Sara on Friday, March 2, 2018

One thing that’s really awesome about traveling in the low season is the no lines part. Today we woke up and decided to check out the Uffizi galleries. The guidebooks all warn about insane lines and advise to book ahead. There weren’t any available reservations for today but we decided to give it a try anyway. It was raining pretty hard this morning so a perfect day to spend arting it up with Dave.

Everything is within walking distance of our hotel which is awesome. After breakfast we walked along the Arno which looks a little rough due to the recent storms to the galleries. No lines. We just walked right in. (Art-tastic high fives all around!)

Thanks to a great recommendation from a Christine we downloaded the Rick Steve’s free podcast to guide our visit. It always is so overwhelming when you go to famous museums like this and see masterpieces you can as about in books right in front of you (I.e. Venus on the half shell). It’s also an extra special experience going with Dave who likes to make up his own stories and histories of the various works, so special that it may need its own podcast someday called Arting with Dave.

After the Uffizi we went to the Duomo where there was a line. The line gave us a chance to admire the exterior of the Duomo, the campanile and the Baptistry which really are quite stunning. Then we went inside and I instantly remembered from the last time I was here when I was in middle school I think 1) how giant it is and 2) how drab it is compared to some of gilded palaces you see in Christiandom.

After the Duomo we headed back to the hotel on the non-touristy side of the Arno. We ate at Trattoria Cent’ori. Our surely waiter slammed down the menu which was a prix fix consisting of a primi and secondi for 10€. Thinking we ordered too much food, Dave got a pasta and Sara got soup followed by salt cod. It was all so good and we did not feel stuffed afterwards.

We rested this afternoon and in the early evening went back up in search of a haircut and beard trim for Dave. They were fully booked so we decided to meander towards cocktail hour which is where we write this post currently to you all, gentle readers.

Also, last night we walked around a bit on a super fancy shopping street before dinner then stopped in a dive bar full of expats called Green Street Bar. So full of expats that they take USD to Euro at a 1:1 exchange rate. One of the girls there let us cuddle her very adorable golden retriever/ dachshund mix named Sonny who was quite friendly and happy to oblige our current puppy snuggle deficiency. We had dinner at a seafood restaurant we found on Eater called Vivo. The food was ok but the restaurant looked like a mall food court. So yea…we’ll be moving away from Eater recos for the rest of the trip and relying on our tried and true method of finding good restaurants in Italy. If there are tradesmen there, it’s good. If there are dogs in the restaurant, also good.

Tomorrow morning we have an appointment for Dave to meet the David. A dopo!

Italy Road Trip

Change of Plans

By David on Thursday, March 1, 2018

This morning we woke up to a winter wonderland up in the little medieval village. The forecast had snow overnight but we were very surprised by how much stuck, about 10 cm by 7am when we first opened the shutters. It was going to be an interesting ride out down the hill to the highway.

As Dave was warming up the car we got a message from our Airbnb host at a farm in the hills above Lucca. They were completely snowed in and their road was impassable, a big snow storm like this really is out of the ordinary here and so they offered us a refund and recommended we stay in the city where the roads would be cleared. We decided to head straight to Florence and called the hotel where we had booked the weekend. They said no problem the room was ready so we said good bye to the little medieval village and started the drive down the hill.

Luckily Dave has lots of snow driving experience as the road was narrow, twisty and unplowed. We got about halfway down before we hit a small uphill section and couldn’t get traction. Unfortunately the chains the rental agency gave us did not fit the car so we had to go without. It took us about 30 minutes of trying to get up the small, steep incline without sliding accidentally off the side and down into the valley but we made it. After that it was pretty mellow down to the autostrada and then once we got on that it was really easy, everything had been freshly plowed and the road was completely clear as if it hadn’t snowed at all.

It took about 2 hours to get until Florence (a much easier experience than getting into Genova even with the weather.) All the schools are closed and a lot of offices so everyone was out and about playing with sleds and getting in snowball fights. Our hotel is very close to the historic center but has a private parking lot. The room is nice and comfortable with a pretty view of the hills.

We had a boatload of laundry to do so we found a laundromat and had a very nice lunch around the corner while we waited for everything to finish. Lunch was at Trattoria Cantinetta Allegri.

Now we are back at the apartment resting and warming up before heading out this evening to see some sights and have dinner.

Italy Road Trip

One if by land, two if by sea

By Dave and Sara on Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Today we write this post from a park bench facing the ocean at a train station in Cornglia, one of the 5 lands. It’s very peaceful and although chilly, the sun is shining on us.

Last night Dave came down with a cold so we cooked in our medieval Airbnb and went to bed early. It was very peaceful and relaxing even if the hot water was a little lacking. This morning we got up and decided that because it’s cold an Dave isn’t feeling great that we’d take the train in between the Cinque Terre rather than hike. A very short drive down into La Spezia and we jumped on the regional train that stops at each of the villages. It’s quite well organized, you buy one ticket that’s good all day and you can get on and off in both directions at any of the 5 villages. We decided to take the train to Vernazza, the second to last village and then work our way back.

Leaving La Spezia, the train goes immediately into a long tunnel. Everyone on the train gasped in awe as we exited the tunnel on the Riomaggiore side with the water directly to the side of the track.

It’s a very beautiful and dramatic ride along the coastline. In Vernazza we got off the train and explored the town which is very pretty.

Most of the shops and restaurants were closed for the season, it was nice to have the place mostly to ourselves but it must be fun in the summer too.

After walking around a bit we decided to grab lunch at what looked like the only place open as it is off season called Blue Marlin Di Basso and catering mostly to the workmen doing renovations around town. If they eat there it must be good we figured. We had a seafood antipasto, pesto pasta and a local dish that is made of anchovies and potatoes layered like a lasagna.

It was all quite good and very full we jumped back on the train to Corniglia.

Corniglia sits up on the hill and from the station it’s a bit of a walk. The view is incredible with all of the jumbled wine terraces, olive groves, Cyprus and lemon trees. We ambled around the village a bit and then made our way back to the train station, luckily because there are only two trains left for the day, each an hour apart. All in all a wonderful day in a gorgeous place.