Day 11 April 20 San Gimignano, Italy

This morning we headed for one of the best examples of Tuscany's hill towns, Cortona.  It was about a two hour drive which was mostly accomplished in the rain.  As we arrived in Cortona we sat in the car to let the passing shower abate.  Ten minutes later we were walking up the steps in bright sunlight that would last the rest of the day.  This town is an interesting explore.  It is not very big so it is easy to look around.  We walked up a steep street to try to get a better view of the surrounding landscape.  We had lunch at a small trattoria where I had bruschetta and gnocchi and Chris had soup and spaghetti with mushrooms.   After a gelato on our way back to the parking lot to get our car and head off to another small town.   Not so fast.   It turns out that the town of Cortona and another nearby town were sponsoring a road race.  We were not allowed to leave the parking lot because we would be right on the race course.  Wow, this is neat we thought.  Then after about two hours of watching cars of all sorts climb the hill and negotiate the turns we grew tired of being fenced in and looked to find out when the race might end.  The sign we found indicated the street would be closed until 7:30 which would make us miss our dinner at our hotel.  Fortunately, it ended about 5:00 and we were able to scoot home in plenty of time to make dinner.
I wanted to say a little more about our hotel.  We were given a lovely room on the second floor that has a large living room with a fire place on one side and a kitchen on the other.  We have a separate bedroom that would contain the entirety of our quarters in Annecy.  The hotel is set atop a hill that overlook fields and vineyards and is the quintessential tuscan villa.  It is a lovely place to call our home away from home.

Chris - I'll elaborate a little more on our 2 bedroom apartment at the villa and the fabulous food we've been eating. The villa is family run by a brother and his wife and a sister and her husband... with their Mom as the cook. If all goes well with the pictures you'll see a picture of the Mom with a couple from Vancover, Canada who we met and had dinner with. The villa is a great experience in Tuscan living, beautiful villa on a hillside, gorgeous vistas, and old - tastefully decorated rooms. Unfortunately the full size kitchen contains all Italian appliances so I couldn't possibly be expected to cook anything here :) I feel a little like Diane Lane and I'm hoping for the Tuscan sun! The Mom cooks from family recipes, just like we were her family. She posts the menu every morning she cooks, outside the registration area, if you want to have dinner here, then you sign up. Currently she's only cooking every Fri., Sat. and Tues., so we have three meals cooked by her. In warmer weather you can eat out on the patios overlooking the valley, since it's too cool outside we eat in the wine cellar. The meals are 4 courses, starting with the anti pasta course, then a pasta course, a main course followed by a dessert. Last night we had pig's meat (prosciutto), with buffalo mozzarella, some kind of crunchy, tasteless onion looking thinly sliced ringlets (I think parsnips), thin orange slices, all drenched in olive oil and sprinkled with thyme for anti pasta; the pasta dish was spaghetti with zucchini and saffron; the main course was wild bore in a BBQ tasting tomato sauce and green beans sauteed in olive oil with lemon and maybe vinegar topped with chopped eggs; the dessert was a vanilla flan topped with a raspberry compote. WOW, everything was amazing!!! And the portions are huge for every course, the sport here is to determine how to pace yourself. I hear the wine list is obviously amazing as well. Thank you to Saralou for recommending this villa to us. A note about my soup this afternoon, it was ribollita - king of tuscan soups, a minestone thicked to a stew by soaking stale bread in it overnight reboiling it the next day and pouring it over new slices of bread and drizzling it with olive oil. It sounded disgusting when I read about it, but since I LOVE minestone soup I gave it a whirl. It was thick like a stew and was heavy on the beans, but also included other root vegetables. There was no pasta in it and you could see and taste the pieces of soaked bread. I loved the soup but ate around the bigger pieces of bread, the taste was great, but I wasn't in love with the texture of the soaked bread.

Tomorrow - who knows...some hill town, guess he's going to surprise me:))