Panzano,
Tuscany,
Italy
Saturday, May 24, 2008
May 24 - We've been keeping a pretty frenzied pace (yesterday we were going non-stop 7 a.m. to midnight) so we decide to take a day to sleep in and take it easy. After breakfast at 9 I took some time to download pictures and write in this journal while Lynnette did some laundry for us. (The plan to take only one carry-on bag per person has worked fine for us with rinsing out some things to dry overnight and now a major laundry day. Our car is larger than average but the luggage compartment is completely full of our stuff when we travel to a new location.) We go into Panzano to a café with high speed wireless internet for lunch. The internet service seems to work pretty well but we're not able to send any e-mails for some odd reason. After lunch we hang out by the pool and read until G, B and Lynnette go to the cooking class while I download and edit pictures. When I join the rest for the end of the class and a glass of wine they're filled with enthusiasm for the cooking class and the food we're about to eat, and it doesn't take long before I share their fervor and their food. They had prepared risotto with fresh artichokes, spinach lasagna, pork loin with a Chianti reduction sauce, and a beautiful and delicious orange marmalade tart for dessert. The whole meal was great. In the next room the other guests, a group of college chums (50 years ago) from Norway, were having a big farewell dinner (I think they've been here all week) including singing several songs around the table. We could hear them singing more songs after dinner and learned at breakfast the next morning that they were singing drinking songs from their college days.
I've decided that Fagiolari is a fine place if you have the right expectations. It is a great place to relax and enjoy the scenery and food but not a very good place to use as a base for day trips and a hurried schedule. It is certainly not your typical B&B. In fact, breakfast seems to be an obligation Guilietta has not figured out how to get around; every day is the same with a big bowl of cornflakes and a big bowl of plain yogurt plus some bread you can put in the toaster and three kinds of jam/marmalade. Fagiolari is really a fine Bed & Dinner place, though. You can eat dinner here every evening if you want to, whether or not you take the cooking class, and the cost is only 25 Euro including wine and dessert, a real bargain compared to what we pay most places.
