Wine Country

Saturday morning around 9ish, Kim, Ross and I made our way down to the car rental to pick up our accidentally fancy car. To explain- I had been pushing for a Tuscan countryside trip. One weekend I wanted to rent a car and drive around looking at sunflowers and drinking wine. A few of our friends were gone in Paris last weekend and with nothing else to do the 3 of us decided this would be the moment. We found a car rental place with an extremely accommodating staff- accept for the little fact that they didn't have the car we wanted. First they weren't entirely sure if they had it and had me leave my number with them so they could call me as soon as they found out. Well they ended up not having it, but they were so sweet we decided to take the more expensive car anyway. Even if they conned us into it... well so be it. It turned out this fancier car had a GPS which we found out was entirely crucial.

We began by spending a nice long morning driving back and forth and around the streets of Florence which proved to be something like the movie In the Mouth of Madness (every time you try to leave you end up back in the middle). Going the wrong way down one way streets doesn't even get you out- we really tried everything. (I wasn't driving. Just for the record).

We eventually got out though, the fates felt pity on us I suppose, and it was like a breath of fresh air. Florence's muggy damp heat immediately began fading away as soon as we started to enter the hills. It is hard to describe the countryside as being anything but exactly what you would expect it to look like; rolling green and yellow hills with scattered villas, farm houses, vineyards and those tall pine cone shaped trees. Just lovely. We didn't have any real destinations. Our hope was to pass through several of little towns in Chianti, do some wine tasting and eventually end up somewhere near Montepulciano and that is exactly what we did. There are numerous little towns in Chianti which take exactly 15 seconds to drive straight through so we stopped in a few to eat, or take pictures, or use a 25 cent bathroom where everything was constantly dripping wet from being sanitized after each use and sported an automatic toilet paper dispenser. I realized as we began to look at what seemed like hundreds of little wineries that I wasn't totally sure if you really could just drive up like you do in Oregon- but as we were nearing the end of the Chianti region we saw a sign saying "Wine Bar" and quickly swerved off the road. Quick decisions made by 3 indecisive people is tough but in this case it was something like,"Wine bar?" "Yes!" "Turn now!" And a great decision it was. Located on top of a small hill, the main building was an adorable old stone structure with a restaurant and free tastings. As we sat outside under ivy covered trellis, drinking incredible wines, looking over a stunning landscape, I thought very contently, "perfect." (The landscape and layout actually looked a lot like King Estates in Oregon, for those of you who have been there). This went on for a while because none of us wanted to leave. There was one other group of 3 people there and the bartender, otherwise it was empty. I couldn't have asked for something better.

Having no reserved lodgings we decided to head toward Montepultiano (once we finally dragged our butts away from heaven) and stay somewhere nearby. The drive down took another hourish, with Kim and Ross in the front battling with our GPS who would occasionally tell us to suddenly turn around, while I battled a bee in the back seat for what seemed like 20 minutes but was probably closer to 2. I ended up conquering while sitting on the floor, cowering behind the driver's seat with sunglasses cases on both hands but it was conquered it nonetheless. When we reached Montepulciano we found it to be a lovely old town that you can drive through but shouldn't. We'd found a cute hotel in our guidebook we wanted to check out and our GPS was leading us through streets about wide enough for 2 vespas to drive past each other but nothing wider, and what street space there was was packed with people. I felt like a movie star with everyone ogling at our car driving a 1/2 mph through the sea of people. We finally parked to check out the place we were looking for and though it was pretty cute we felt we could do better and the streets of Montepulciano were making us claustrophobic. With the second unanimous decision of the day we decided to get the hell out of the town and stay somewhere breathable.

Barely outside of town Kim suddenly said, "Hotel!" pointing to a sign on a hill, like a red Hollywood sign that read- "Hotel." As that was what we were looking for, we decided to investigate. We began our investigation by driving up a steep, curvy, gravel driveway exactly the width of our car with tall shrubs on either side that ended with an iron gate. Excited to try his hand at backing down such a road, since there was obviously nowhere to turn around, Ross inched us down, literally an inch at a time, running into the bushes here, bending the rearview mirrors back there, with the fresh smell of a grinding transmission to sooth us the whole way. By the bottom we were all convinced the real hotel was going to be really great and with our moods brightened we finally found the right driveway and headed up. We first passed what seemed to be a Broadway in the 20s themed restaurant that had once been something fancy and now was gutted and covered in plant life. This was also reassuring and we continued on up. We then came upon the actual building which we had to stare at for a few minutes to figure out if it was in the same situation as the restaurant or actually in operation. Obviously built in the 70s, this building also had sad feel of something once grand that lost it's grandeur. There appeared to be an addition to the building that was begun but never finished. A large open concrete structure was attached to one side but it seemed to have been a project abandoned. This didn't dissuade us a bit. We walked in and checked out the lobby (which now confirmed the 70s origin) toward the desk behind which stood an extremely sad and tired looking man and woman. The following was quite verbatim the conversation, "You looking for a room?" "Yes," "For 3?" "Yes please, if you have it." "We don't." We looked at each other, "Oh... well OK..." "Well we do. We have two. But they're bad." "...They're... they're bad?" What does it even mean when the hotel clerk says their room is bad. Haunted? A recent murder? These were the only things we could think of. "Well," they said, "we'll show you." He led us to two rooms and opened one door. They smelled a little musty (with a sales pitch like that they probably weren't used much) but other than that they were fine. "They don't have views, just construction. 90 euro for both together, breakfast included." He opened the other door and before we had a chance to say a thing headed back to his desk. We looked at each other. Breakfast included? 90 euro? A pool (which I forgot to mention but was a selling point for Ross from the beginning)? Haunted rooms? We were sold. We walked back down the halls that looked not unlike the shining, through a huge dining room with chandeliers and long orange curtains and said "we'll take it!" They seemed mildly surprised.

We went up to our new rooms and each spent a healthy 15 minutes opening our doors (the skinny keys would go straight through the keyhole and had to be finagled juuust right in order to work). Then we finally opened the blackout curtains to see our lack-of views. They weren't kidding. Kim and I had a nice view of a construction site and Ross... well Ross looked into that old abandoned concrete construction project. It's weird to have a window that looks into something as opposed to outside, let me tell you. And an old concrete skeleton with wheelbarrows and piles of brick that smells faintly of... unpleasantness is even odder. But hell, it had character. We left our stuff and checked out the surrounding area before heading to dinner. I've got to give the outside of the place credit. It wasn't in it's prime but it must have once been a sight to behold. The full name was Hotel Panoramic, and for good reason. Situated on the very top of a hill, it had an absolutely stunning view of the countryside from every angle. Montepulciano, an ancient hill city one direction, rolling hills and a large lake in another, vineyards all around. The pool area was actually very nice. It was outside, well maintained and right next to an olive grove also owned by the hotel. The olive grove was sprinkled with other trees including pears and plumbs and a foosball table. Yup. Right in the middle of the trees. Kim an I had an epic battle the next day which ended in a knock down drag out tie.

That evening we drove back to Montepulciano (and this time we parked the car and walked in). We stopped at a restaurant we'd seen the first time drove through with barrels of wine that must have been 15 ft tall. The dinner was superb, mine being homemade pasta which they brought out and then took the biggest truffle I've ever seen and grated a hefty mound on top. It was still reasonably priced and amazingly good. And of course the wine was delicious as well. That night we brought one more bottle home from the same restaurant and drank it outside on the patio, just above the other side of the red "Hotel" sign, which was a bright green "Panoramic" sign, looking over the scattered lights of Tuscany.

The next morning we were slow to leave. We ate a huge breakfast (which consisted mostly of about 9 different types of pie) and they told us although checkout was at 11, we could stay at the pool as long as we wanted, so we did just that. Finally we decided to get a move on but in a slightly different direction this time. We headed over to Cortona through what was obviously sunflower country. This is my favorite. The fields that from one direction look green, and from another are bright yellow from all their sunny little faces. In Cortona we once again ate a delicious meal (lots of good eating on this trip) and spent some time in an outdoor antique market. But the clouds were looking ominous for the first time in a long time and we were getting tired, so we finally decided to set our GPS toward Florence. Back in the car the rain finally set in but it wasn't until we were right at the top of a mountain that we experienced probably the closest lighting strike any of us had seen. It lit up the already light sky so entirely we couldn't even see where it was coming from and we felt the car rattle before we heard it which was about 1 second later. And with that, it was back home for us.

The rest I don't know because I was sleeping.

Besides the trip, I've been mostly just going to my internship and class everyday. My Italian seems to be having trouble improving but I think I've grown in my sign language. I am the Frutinni queen (little tiny fruit tarts essentially). They occasionally show me another thing or two but that is my go-to everyday responsibility. Also eating. That is also a responsibility. They make me eat some pastry for breakfast when I come in (which I don't argue with) but then continually hand me more pastries and sandwiches throughout my time there (which is two hours). I leave having eaten at least 3 huge pastries, one being a sandwich, each day. My pants remind me everyday these pastries aren't going unnoticed by my waistline and so for the first time today I respectfully declined an offer of food. Now, I'd already eaten pie before I left home (we made it last night and I was making sure it set) and a croissant when I got there. Giovanni asked if I wanted a panino. I said no thanks, I'd already eaten and he brought me one anyway. I said I was full and had eaten but he just continued looking at me saying "Mangi mangi!" but I was really very full. Finally, feeling I'd insulted them enough, I ate half of it. But nope- that's not enough. I got hell for it all day. Comments to the other chef like "well you have to eat 1 and 1/2 because she only ate half of hers." and every now and then it was nudged toward me as though in the 10 minutes after I'd eaten my 3 other meals of the day, I'd worked up an appetite. Finally, the other floater chef came in and said, "whose is this?" picked it up and ate it. Thank goodness. Don't get me wrong, they're absolutely delicious but one can only eat so many pastries between the hours of 6:30 and 7am.

I have learned.