Bonnie & Joel's Excellent Adventures

In the last post we had just visited our first winery on our second day in Siena.  Confused yet?  Today we are headed from Manarola in Cinque Terre to Almalfi.  Currently on the fast train from La Spezie to Roma…confused now?  Train time is a good time to catch up a little.

Quick update on the luggage weight challenge.  As you know we started the trip at 21 pounds and 27 pounds respectively, now with the addition of some DOP Italian products we have gained about 10 pounds….we are talking luggage here, not your wayward travelers.

Anyway back to the Siena highlights.  From the idyllic family farm of Tea and Gianluca we drove closer to Montalcino to a one man operation on about 20 acres.  His real name is buried somewhere deep in the luggage so for our purposes we will refer to him as Luigi.  Luigi was a trip, in a good way.  Very….confident…had a definite point of view on winemaking.  His comments on French winemakers was typical, his view is that the French are only great wine marketers, that they do not make the wine like Italians, by carefully controlling the growing and tending of the grapes.  The French make their wines good by mixing the juices, not growing the grapes well.  He may have standing to make these comments.  His small production of Brunello is distributed to some very fine restaurants in NYC.  He was name dropping Batali’s Babbo.  We had a great time with “Luigi” and his wine was spectacular,  we were his only visitors, other than contractors working on his house.  We got a great deal on some bottles, which are being shipped, so no added weight.  Bonnie did try to do a little matchmaking between Luigi and Francesca but to no avail.  Back to the Inn, ride with Mario to the escalators and a much more local dinner of pici pasta and house wine.

Next day we had a tour of the city of Siena with Claudia.  We started with a fabulous breakfast spread of wonderful cheeses, meats fruits and cakes.  In the room with us this morning happened to be two native Texans, Houston variety, transplanted to around Fort Lauderdale Florida.  Bubba was turning 80 on this trip yet was still driving around Tuscany in a rental car.  They were headed to a week long cooking class with a chef, nice.  Best part of our discussion with Mr. & Mrs. Bubba was when we were talking about the weather, safest topic…believe me, Bubba commented that some of the “wine plants” had not grown very much yet.  Unkind to laugh, maybe but it is a great line.  Hoping the Salami plants make it this year!  After breakfast it was time for Mario to drive us to the escalators so we could meet up with Claudia and begin our tour.  He was in the middle of a discussion with Bubba about parking and street signs when he saw us looked at his watch and in the most comical fashion threw up his arms and started shouting, “we must go”.  We were in jeopardy of being a few minutes late, Mario is not your typical Italian when it comes to tardiness, but he does drive like and Italian.  We hauled it that morning from the Inn to the escalators.  Made it in record time and mixed cardio with riding the escalator and met Claudia at the top.

Claudia was filled with knowledge on Siena, we learned about the Cathedral, the Palio the Contradas, the Campo, the Hospital and life in Siena.  Her mother is a physician in Siena, her father a professor in Bologna.  She is a tour guide and manages her family AgriTourismo business just outside the city walls.  First stop was the Cathedral Santa Maria Assunta.  Four popes, so far, have hailed from Siena so you can bet that the home cathedral was magnificent.  Magnificent multicolored marble mosaics decorated the floors, Baroque decorations combined with Renaissance art work from Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bernini.  There were supposed to be 4 statues by Michelangelo but he was commissioned to do a little piece of work in Florence (The David) in the middle and never returned to Siena to finish his work, so there is an empty niche in the display including three Michelangelo works.  The library in the Cathedral was breathtaking.  The guide was not allowed to even whisper in the room, so we heard about the history before entering the room.  Our jaws dropped at the intricate painting on the walls and ceiling.  It was like entering an optical illusion.  The Trompe l’oeil made you think you were looking at arches in three D.  Incredible.

We walked around the city among the 17 Contradas, or neighborhoods that make up the city.  They once stood for military divisions, each neighborhood had their own militia that would come together to defend the city.  Heated rivalry with Florence where the Spanish allied with Florence to conquer Siena in the 1500’s, seems to have cooled a little.  Now each Contradas prepares to compete in the twice a year horse race around the city center called the Palio.  Deadly serious business by neighbors who have names like the Geese, Eagles, Unicorns, Rhinoceros, and Dragons.  Almost like the Jets and Sharks, complete with music from the drum and flag corps we saw rehearsing their own Contratadas specific beats.

People file around the Campo city center, which normally is ringed with open air cafes, they make a horse track by pouring sand over the cobblestones outside a center fan area.  Each Contradata competing that year, only 10 of 17 get to compete each year because 17 horses running around a huge crowd would be too crazy, evidently 10 is just the right crazy.  Jockeys and horses have been hired, they train three days before the race, run three laps, where full contact is allowed, and a winner is crowned.  Claudia says it is much more important for your arch rival Contradas not to win than it is for you to win.  Prize for the Contradas, a banner and a full year of bragging.  Prize for the winning jockey is half a million euros.  What could go wrong there?

Speaking of things going wrong.  We had finished with Claudia, had a wonderful light lunch of a Spritz and appetizers at a bar on the Campo with an incredible 700,000 Euro mosaic floor.  Yep some bar owner spent that much on his floor.  Hey it’s art, but anyway.

It was about time to refill the Euros in the wallet so we stopped by a shop with an ATM machine and attempted to withdraw some money from our bank.  Couple of funny messages about my card being reported stolen and I say, let’s head over to an ATM at a bank.  We try the card at the bank and the machine confiscates my card!  This does not make me a happy boy.  I dial up the bank in the US, burning a few International call minutes, more unhappiness when they put me on hold for 10 minutes.  Anyway suffice it to say that there was some snafu in the international data, I was not going to have a card the rest of the trip, thankfully we made sure Bonnie’s card was functional just in case, and finally Joel will have a visit with this bank’s president upon our return to give him a very thorough review of their customer service and a termination of relationship message.  But we didn’t let it ruin our day, we had another spritz and Americano Martini from the bar with the mosaic, and a couple of gelatos to top it off.

We finished our last night in Siena with a scrumptious dinner at a very local spot, where they made rustic sausage and even had a spleen pate, first time ever knowingly eating spleen and it was tasty for me for Bonnie not so much, house wine and more pici pasta.  Followed by attending a short performance of opera music by a pianist and soprano in a small neighborhood church.  Taxi back to the Inn.

Next morning after a wonderful breakfast we said our goodbyes to the team at the Inn, Sara, Greta, Elizabetta and Mario.  And Elizbetta’s father up for the day from Rome.  Grabbed a taxi to the station and began our train journey to Cinque Terre.  From Siena to Empoli to La Spezia to Manarola.  Whew.  No missed trains, knock wood, and no real difficult connections although we only had 7 minutes at Empoli.  Turns out Empoli is very small and our two trains were steps apart.  Speaking of steps that may be a familiar type in the next dispatch regarding Cinque Terre.