Back outside. This is right across the street from our building. The old (in the distance) and the new.....
Zoomed in, same perspective as above.
I bet this is a fruiting tree, but I'm not sure what kind. Those red twigs make me think "cherry."
The view across the street.
Zoomed.
Back on the terrace. It was about 5:00, and we weren't having dinner till 8:30. We decided to have some taralli and yogurt, on the terrace.
It was beautifully, blissfully quiet. Wind, and birdsong..... The air smelled wonderful. Fresh, and green.... We moved the table so we could sit in the sunshine as we soaked in the quiet and the air. Mmmmmmmm.
Looking down the hill from our terrace. I am really thinking this is about the correct distance for neighbors. Not packed cheek-by-jowl as in town, not 20' away as in the suburbs. A good long distance, so that every noise they make is not audible to those next door.
Looking south toward the agritourismo (but that's not it, or at least, isn't part of it that we saw).
Yogurt, on the terrace, with grapevines in the distance.
Succulents in a planter on the wall around the terrace.
The back of our building. I believe there were at least three rooms on the ground floor, and am sure there was at least one upstairs.
When the sun was no longer on the terrace, we went inside and figured out how to turn on the heat. We read a bit, and wrote a bit.
We noticed the sun was setting, and went out for more pics.
The main building of the agritourismo is at the top of the hill on the right, just left of the road.
The west wall of our building. Wondering about the origins of all of these building materials, and what previous structures they may have been part of. Wondering about the people who quarried or made them, brought them here, and built this structure.
Construction of this wall took some serious shape-fitting skill.
!!!
Just a bit later, when we started walking back to the main building of the agritourismo for dinner, the sky looked like this.
(No cars -- or motorcycles -- came by any of the times we walked on this road. I would say that no more than half a dozen vehicles went by, the whole time we were on the property.)
We were the only guests for dinner that night, and we thoroughly enjoyed dining with our hosts. We had another long and varied conversation.
Our hosts' travel to India. Yoga. Traveling with adult children. The way running a B&B-type place in Tuscany is sort of like reverse travel -- the world comes to you. Whether the state should support mothers' staying home with kids under the age of 3 or 4. The bizarre fact that some noticeable percentage of people can't bear to spend even one night in a place where it is so quiet you don't hear any people noises at all. And many other topics.
It was Patrizia who realized that a lot of people who are 60 (plus or minus a few) know some French because we learned it in high school, regardless of whether we grew up in Italy or the USA. She said all of her English was learned speaking to her guests at the agritourismo. She was eminently able to communicate her thoughts in English and to understand ours -- that's surely my hallmark for a having good grasp on a language!
I'd been explaining Ugo to people, because he was a funny vehicle for us to be driving -- so much bigger than we needed. I hadn't explained him at Castello della Panaretta, and Patrizia asked "Why you drive such a big car?" We explained The Case of the Absent Smart Car, and she said "You are much safer this way!" And so we were, I am sure.
Dinner was delicious. We started with toasted bread with olive oil and garlic -- fettunta. It was very garlicy, and had much more olive oil than in the pics (if you click through the link).
Then there was spaghetti with tomatoes and basil.
Then there were thin slices of a very special Italian beef, rare, over arugula.
We finished with a slice of a tart that was a bit like cheesecake, but not as creamy.
All delicious.
There was Chianti Classico from the castle down the street.
It was a very enjoyable and memorable evening. Should you plan a visit to Tuscany with a car, do go stay with Patrizia and Massimo!
While we still have dinner on our minds, I want to talk for a moment about regional cuisine. This is something else that is wonderful about Europe. Each region within a country has a noticeably different cuisine from that enjoyed by its neighbors. When we were in Emilia, there was Parmigiano everywhere. It was on the table at mealtime (even breakfast, perhaps). For some dishes, addition of grated Parmigiano by a diner was de regueur. In Tuscany, no Parmigiano, but olive oil everywhere, perhaps in every dish, and more garlic than I remember in Emilia.
In the USA, everything is much more homogenized, even though our country is vast in size, compared to Italy. There are some regional dishes here, to be sure, but the pervasiveness of special local ingredients in an Italian area's everyday dishes is very different from the way people generally eat, here in the USA. The fact that communication and transportation have been so easy for so much of US history has, I bet, had a huge negative impact on the level of variety of food available across the USA, compared to France and Italy..... (And, I imagine, in the rest of Europe, though I can't say so from personal experience.)
This is one of the things that makes travel in Europe so interesting and pleasurable to a person who is actively interested in food. Travel an hour and a half in a car or train, and arrive at a place with a very different cuisine from the one you enjoyed yesterday! Eat something delicious that you've never had before, every day (perhaps even every meal!). Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
It was completely dark when we walked back to our building the night of April 10. There was just enough starlight to make out the road.
I hadn't been anyplace where night was so dark in years. I didn't see the Milky Way, but I saw more stars than I've seen since I was a kid. So cool......... We identified the Big and Little Dippers, but didn't know any other late-spring constellations.
It was amazingly, beautifully, wonderfully quiet on the ridge of that Tuscan hill. The sound of the wind in the vegetation was the only sound we heard, as we strolled back to our building, our eyes on that star-filled sky.
I am so glad we were able to have that experience.
My daughter did an absolutely fabulous job of picking our agritourismi!
In order to facilitate chronological traversal of these posts, here is a link to the next post.
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