Tuscany

  Panzono, Italy
Thursday, May 22, 2008

May 22 - We leave Sorrento for a 5 hour road trip to Tuscany. The drive is beautiful through the Italian hills (mountains for this Kansan) and it's interesting to see the old towns strategically located on top of hills for defense. It looks like most had walls around them in the early days but have grown outside the walls now. For lunch we stop in one of those towns, Orvieto, which is just a few km off the Autostrade (turnpike). Gary and Bonnie had stopped here before, and they were shocked that this time we were able to drive all the way into the center of town and park. In the summer tourist season access is restricted and you have to park outside the walls and hike uphill a ways to get to the center. In the center is an incredibly large and beautiful Catholic church. In addition to the size and design of the structure a most striking feature is the alternating rows of dark and light marble it is made of, giving it a striped appearance. Of course it has the ornate sculptures and frescoes and massive ornate doors that we've come to expect on churches in Italy, and like most of the others it is surrounded by a spacious piazza that features stores and restaurants on the perimeter. We eat lunch at one of the restaurants before going inside the

Lunch in Orvieto

church to look around. The weather was sunny and beautiful when we arrived in Orvieto, but by the time we ordered lunch a thunderstorm moved in and hung around for our entire visit. We should have taken pictures when we got there.Left aligned photo tag:

Bonnie with umbrella

We arrive at our B&B destination, Fagiolari, around 6 p.m. Fagiolari is at the end of a rough gravel road, about a 10 minute drive from the nearest town, Panzano. It is a grand old stone country house with a tile roof that has 6 individual rooms (some with shared baths) plus the owner's quarters and a separate cottage where Gary and Bonnie are staying. The owner, Giuletta Giovannoi, thinks the house goes back to the 12th century, but when she bought it in 1980 it needed extensive work. She has had it open as a B&B since 1996. The 20-acre grounds are beautiful and the views of Tuscany are like out of a movie. A small vineyard and 150 olive trees plus a swimming pool are on the grounds. Giuletta reports that she makes her own wine (Chianti, of course, since this area is known as Chianti) and has her olives made into her own olive oil every year. Our room is nice and large with a red tile floor and a private bath with shower, and we share a sitting area with a fireplace with the other guests. Giuletta runs a cooking school here, and Gary, Bonnie and Lynnette are signed up for a class on Saturday. I've decided not to take the class (at 90 Euro per person) but will eat the meal they prepare. A big concern we have with Fagiolari is the difficulty in getting in and out of the place. The road is very bad and parking is at a real premium. We spent about 15 minutes trying to maneuver into a parking space (Gary driving with me out of the car trying to help him gauge how much space he had for backing up and turning) but we ended up backing in to a low stone wall with vines growing over it and damaging the rental car (twice actually). When we arrived they showed us our room and gave us three keys and said be sure to lock all three doors (a heavy storm door and a thick wooden exterior door and then another door to our room) every time we come in or leave. All three doors have to be unlocked and locked with one of the keys, even from the inside, so it could be very difficult to get out in a fire. We have two windows that we can use if we have to but they're fairly high up off the ground level. Gary and Bonnie have a separate cottage away from the main building and don't have the access problems Lynnette and I have (after the car is parked anyway). The cottage has a kitchen and a patio with a great view of the Tuscan countryside so we have our usual pre-dinner wine and cheese there. We have dinner at Ristoro di Lamole, an excellent restaurant in Lamole, a little town about 10 km from Fagiolari.