Pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/debstah1/sets/72157622744012816/
7:30am: Slept pretty well last night for once. Better late than never. Got up around 6:30 and put some things into a small wash to last me the final few days of the trip. It is so foggy today - even worse than yesterday. Typical that the last few days we're going to the parts of Tuscany with the most beautiful roads and landscapes and we won't be able to see most of it. We're not leaving til a bit later today because Chianti's closer, so just hoping it will clear out a little as the day goes on.
9:00pm: phew! Back at the farmhouse after quite a long day. Well, when we left this morning at around 8:15 it was not looking very promising. Then as we started heading towards Chianti, the sky basically opened up and blue skies and sunshine poured in!! On the road there, a cop appeared behind me. I was freaking out. The first gas station I saw, I pulled in and we got cappuccini. We ended up driving through Castellina and Radda, the other two towns we'd be visiting later. Because it was sunny there and warming up quickly, we rolled down the windows and thank goodness we did because as we started rolling into Radda, the air actually smelled of wine. I've never experienced anything like it.
Then we made it to gaiole, which is really quite small and took all of… 20 minutes? We decided to detour to Castello di Brolio, one of the biggest wine estates and very important in Italian history because Italy's 2nd prime minister Risacoli's family owns the castle. So we found it and parked at the bottom, then had a llllooooooooooong hike up to the castle. Admission to the gardens and whatnot plus a tour of the new little museum in the castle's tower was 8 euros so we went for it at 11:30. The views from the Castle walls onto the surrounding landscape were absolutely stunning and worth the price (and uphill hike) alone. It was really quite cool because the museum was a little guided tour for about a half hour and it's in the tower of the castle and it's dedicated to Risacoli and the armory they used to use. This guy was into drawing, scientific experiments, obviously politics, and he also basically invented Chianti Classico. We also learned that the noises we're hearing in the morning that sound like fireworks are most likely gunshots to kill the chingiale (wild boar), because the hunting season is right now.
So around noon after the tour, we went down to the wine shop because our tickets for the museum tour gave us a free tasting. So we went for the expensive stuff - 2005 Riserva - which according to the price sheet (if I read it correctly) sells for 234 euros a bottle. I thought it was vile, quite frankly. I'll just never like red wine :(
So then we set off for the next town, Radda, where we found a little very busy place for lunch. I had a panini with prosciutto, cheese of some kind, and black olive paste. It was basically awesome. We wandered around for a little bit but of course at that time pretty much every place is closed for afternoon siesta, so we went back out to the main street where a place advertised bruschetta with NEW OLIVE OIL!!! So I had to try this of course even though I was full. It was, well, awesome. The oil was so peppery and had such an astringent or antiseptic quality that my mouth where I ate it felt a little bit like I put orajel or something on it. Incredible experience, if a bit creepy.
Then we detoured to the Volpaia hamlet, which is cute and all but really kind of remote and boring. So we doubled back and continued to Castellina, the biggest town of the 3 we were going to visit today, and as we exited Radda in that direction, we got the whiff of wine yet again. Still pretty incredible. On the way we stopped at the Montecalvario (or something) etruscan tombs, which are on a little mound with four separate tombs/entrances. Apparently these are very important tombs. There was this case with informational cards, which was nice and all but the tombs had no lighting at all so it was dark in there. Otherwise they were neat. So then we made it to Castellina, which has lots of little wine shops and other types of shops. One was selling bottles of olio nuovo that were in a more manageable size than I'd seen anywhere else to this point. We wandered around the main streets and made it to the gelateria I'd read about at the other far end of town. We both had hot chocolate with gelato for only 2 euros. Mine was with coffee gelato. So of course the rich thick dark chocolate melts the gelato and it became basically a warm mocha drink. It was amazing, so rich. So then we wandered back to town in and out of wine shops and the like and went to the archaeological museum, which was in the main palazzo in the center of town. It had a lot of stuff recovered from etruscan tombs in the area, which was pretty neat, considering how old this stuff is. The nice thing is that it had wonderful explanations that they handed out and put on the items, which all had english explanations too. They even gave us a clipboard with even more information, and it included a questionnaire about the visit to the museum, which I thought was nice.
So then it was about 5pm and we had wanted to stay in Castellina for dinner so we had to kill some time. Across from the museum there was an internet café so we logged in and caught up on some news. I checked my email and luckily the olive place I had written some time ago wrote back today asking if we were still coming tomorrow. Yay!!! So after about 45 min we called him and set up a visit for 2pm tomorrow, so that should be exciting. It's a good thing I held off on the olio nuovo I saw today. So we just wandered around for about an hour, in and out of shops and through the little Coop supermarket in town until it was finally 7 and we picked a pizzeria. We'd had a ton to eat all afternoon so we weren't that hungry. We just split a mixed salad and a pizza and at about 8pm set off back for the farmhouse. Besides being incredibly dark, it was a pretty easy 40 min ride, so that was good.
Northern Chianti tomorrow - cannot believe it's our last day :(
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