A Drive Through the Mountains... Literally

Yesterday morning we said our goodbyes to the gite, which was quite sad -- not only because we had to leave a beautiful place, but also because it meant our vacation with our best friends was coming to an end. We dropped Tim and Kate off at the hotel in Nice they had made reservations at for Saturday night, gave them big hugs goodbye, and sadly left them behind. They are flying home to Virginia as I type this. Since our car failed us so badly on Mont Ventoux and we were so close to the Hertz location at the Nice airport, we decided to give a shot at trading in our car. Thankfully it was a huge success, as they even gave us a free upgrade, so we are now the proud renters of a Renault Laguna (diesel as well, which means better fuel efficiency and cheaper gas bills). So with the GPS working for the most part and a more powerful car, we headed off to Tuscany for the second week of our vacation.

We were spared most of the rain as we made our way through the French Riviera, which was extremely beautiful. I tried to get a couple of shots through the car window as we drove by, but was not met with much success. The number of tunnels we went through yesterday was unbelievable. We decided it's no wonder you have to pay so much in tolls with the amount of work that had to go into building the motorways through the mountains. The rain did finally catch us again as we drove through Italy, and it's pretty much been raining ever since. It did clear up for a bit today -- long enough for Jarrett and I to walk from where we are staying at Locanda Viani into the town of San Gimignano.

Locanda Viani is great so far, despite the weather. Our room (the yellow room) is quaint and immaculate. If the weather clears up we'll be able to take advantage of our table and chairs on our private terrace, which overlooks olive groves and vineyards. Last night we ate dinner in the restaurant downstairs and had a good time attempting to converse with the husband of the couple that owns the Locanda, Roberto Viani. Neither he nor his wife speaks English (aside from a few words here or there), so it's been an adventure, but we're getting along pretty well thanks to the Italian lessons we worked our way through prior to the trip, as well as our handy-dandy Lonely Planet pocket Italian book. We are definitely much more capable of communicating here than we were in France. French is a beautiful language, but Italian just makes a heck of a lot more sense to me. Anyway, dinner was fabulous. They don't have a set written menu because they like to decide upon their dishes based on the fresh ingredients they come across on any given day. Last night they started us off with a glass of champagne and a small skewer of a few different pieces of sausage. Then came an appetizer of "beef salad pickled with Chianti," which I thought was going to be a bit of a challenge for me, but I found it to be quite delightful (you can't say I haven't branched out in terms of cuisine on this trip). The first course was "timbale of aubergines and ricotta with tomato sauce." According to the menu, the origin of "timbale" is very ancient. Apicius was the first to document the existence of such a mixture very similar to this pasta in his treaty, "De re coquinaria" in 230 AD. He described "timbale" as "closed in a stripe of thin dough made of flour and water." Anyway, it was delicious. The second course was "sirloin of 'cinta senese' with herbs and vegetable pudding," which was excellent, and this was followed up with a very unique Tuscan dessert. We definitely won't be able to eat dinner here every night, but he already talked us into it for this evening. We ate a cheap lunch of pizza (quattro formaggi for me; margherita for Jarrett) on our walk into San Gimignano.

We did a bit of browsing through the shops in the old part of the city -- we bought a couple of prints we fell in love with, which will be shipped to us so we don't have to worry about crushing them on the flight back. We also bought an umbrella, as we were met with yet another rainstorm before heading back to the Locanda (it's supposedly going to clear up by Tuesday... keep your fingers crossed for us). San Gimignano is somewhat similar to Les Baux in France, just much larger, and it doesn't seem quite as "touristy" to me. It's definitely heaven for photographers, as is the Tuscan countryside in general. It is now obvious to both Jarrett and I why people are attracted so to this area -- it's spectacular... rolling hills, covered by the occasional villa, plots of vineyards and olive groves criss-crossing over each other, etc. This will be a fun week... I'm sure of that.

One interesting tidbit about Locanda Viani's restaurant is that there are only four tables, one for each room in the house. It so happened last night that all four couples staying here ate dinner, so we were able to meet everyone. We hit it off with the couple sitting at the table to the right of us. They're from New Zealand, but now live and recently bought a house in Australia... they're actually a bit younger than us, engaged, and are on a five-week vacation through various parts of Europe. They're here for four nights... but we think we may have killed them last night. We stayed up drinking with them for hours, first down in the restaurant and then up in our room. We haven't seen them at all today. We were feeling a bit rough ourselves this morning, so I can't say that I blame them. I definitely won't be drinking as much the rest of the week.