The Tuscan Affair

A vanilla Tuscan moon
Through wooden shutters
How sweet the lover's sigh.

The two photos I took of the full moon from the bedroom of my B & B in Monterongrifolli were blurred, but the remembered view in my imagination is always much more beautiful anyway. So, imagine an open window on a cool fall night, antique wooden shutters pulled away to reveal the silhouette of a Tuscan hillside and the quiet blanket of night over all. This was my last night in Tuscany and I came to the full realization then that I had ARRIVED.

But enough of that. With a romance and a temporary but passionate affair such as this, one should always start at the beginning.

Tuscany is a region somewhat known in America due to a number of romantic movies and books such as "Under the Tuscan Sun" and "Room With a View." Sometimes when things are loved to death through literature or media they cannot possibly live up to their reputation and the resulting expectations. Fortunately for us all, this is not the case with Tuscany. It is all the smells, sights and feelings that you read about and see and it is more.

We left Sicily and arrived at the Rome airport. There we rented a car with a GPS and headed out to the mountainous region of Abruzzo. We spent one night in a small abandoned village with a B&B. That is another VERY LONG blog about getting lost as the sun sets, finding long lost relatives, showering with small scorpians, and enjoying a frugal meal of bread, hard cheese, proscuitto, and olives with small boxes of red wine as the haunting wind whistled outside the door and across the stone streets of an Italian ghost town. As if this wasn't exotic enough, after our make-shift supper, we watched an iffy TV cable reception beaming in from Northern Africa of the 2000 movie "The Gladiator" with French-African subtitles!

So, I will skip to warmer and more romantic Tuscany.

We left Abuzzo and drove north to the Tuscan region along the Autostrada which is just like the freeways we have in the U.S. It was not too crowded and there were only one or two 'crazy Italian" drivers and only one or two drivers who insisted that they needed to straddle both lanes in order to drive effectively. The rest of us knew what we were doing and where we were going...well sort of. We were fine except for when the GPS episodically disconnected at the most inopportune times.

We stopped briefly in the medieval walled town of Orvieto for a very nice lunch at a touristy place called The Grotto---now I know where that expensive restaurant in New York got it ideas. Not the expense...but the decor.

This is the outside of the restaurant and when you enter you head immediately down a flight of stairs to the grotto. There is a window to an outside fortressed wall at the end of the restaurant that lets in a little light.


We ordered a bottle of Vernaccia di S. Gimignano---a very nice white table wine. I ordered a ravioli stuffed with wild boar and floating in a buttery sauce, probably too robust for the wine, but like my feelings for art I am confident enough to appreciate things in my unique way. Besides my table mates were getting tired of the robust reds. They each ordered a pasta dish as well, one with a sweet sausage and one with ham. This was preceeded by a nice antipasta plate of cheeses and meats and olives.


We then took a walk to the walls of the city to look out over the country below as the afternoon was starting to wane. (Remember, you eat the midday meal in Italy starting at 3:00, so by the time we had wined and dined it was getting late.)


The city was arty and had lovely things to buy. Very much geared for the spending tourist.


And of course, the city had its important church in the center off of a large piazza at the highest point of the town. This one was most impressive, I must say. More lovely on the outside.


And the tourists were watching the locals who were watching the tourists!


We ended the day with a walking dessert at a world famous gelato place. They had a poster up that showed Alexander Solzenitzen eating gelato there, so we just HAD to try it.



Then trying to avoid putting our arrival too close to dark we reached the Agritourismo farm Locanda Rosati an hour before our scheduled 8:00PM family style dinner. We had brought playing cards and proceeded to sit at a game table in one of the farm-like sitting rooms playing games and sipping the wine brought by our host, Paulo. The dinner meal began in a large rustic dining room with introductions of all the guests and a vociferous welcome from Paulo. Many bottles of red and white wines were brought to the table for us to help ourselves. Then we started with a pate of boar, chicken liver, lime juice, olives, etc. to be spread on some salted puffed breads that were very much like sopapillas only salty. This was followed by an excellent mushroom rissotto, which was then followed by a meatloaf of wild boar, some wild bird and pistachios with a side dish of roasted potatoes. More wine and then a buttery fruit tart. Finally bottles of grappa, limonchello, and mezzaluna arrived and people freely sampled everything. I am not big on sweet liquors, but had fun watching my two mates get a little plastered and silly. After all, our room was only a short walk up a few steps.


Early the next morning we explored the grounds and found a lovely orchard of chestnuts and met our host's sister-in-law filling plastic bags with those that had fallen.


We checked out of the Inn after a breakfast of coffee that was to die for and an assortment of fruit, pastries and breads. We obtained directions to our next stop from their Internet, and thus plotted the day. We had been told that Italy's shopping outlets were on the way so we decided to stop at one called "THE MALL" just to see what an outlet in Italy was all about. There were stores from Fendi, Yves St. Laurent, Valentino, Gucci, Georgio Armani and a bunch of other old guys I had not heard about. These were the kind of stores that, in the states, you would wait for someone to unlock the door for you to enter. Here there was a steady stream of customers going in and out, many rich Asians with lots of bags over their shoulders. Items inside were 50 to 70% off! But since most items started at over $1,000 including simple silk blouses, I had to pass on any souvenirs from this place. (I played mind games in my head on what the ironing board thin 'customers assistants' in their designer clothes were thinking as I entered with my Macy's purse and sporting goods store walking shoes...and controlled myself so that I didn't laugh out loud.)

Then, as we settled back in the car, we read the directions from Chris and Christina to their Inn called Ankhura. They went something like this: Follow the exit to (Tuscan town) and then as you enter the roundabout take the exit to (another Tuscan town) and follow this road up the hill past the exit to (another Tuscan town) and take the roundabout and pass the exit to (another smaller Tuscan town) and head out and past the exit to (a very small Tuscan town) and then go on a gravel road and past (a named road) and head up the hill and pass the road to the cemetary and then you will reach Monterongrifolli.

Park your car at the sign that says "no parking beyond this point" and then go around the church and we are in the back up the street.(At first we thought that the symbol below was the no parking part! I took the photo the next day when we discovered it in the daylight.)



We arrived in the dark after 8:00 after much reading of signs and maps and second guessing and even going down a few blind streets in little unknown towns.

But the place was tremendously lovely and the hostess was graciousness personified. So, now it was time for my well-earned sleep on her lovely Malay linens and you too must rest for tomorrow we head out on a truffle hunt AND a wine tour.