Today was tour day. We went to the town of Montepulciano during the day to check out old town, before we had a photography tour booked with Alfredo.
Montepulciano can be a little bit confusing because it’s the name of a medieval hilltop town in the province of Sienna in Tuscany, and it’s also the name of a wine that is not produced in Tuscany.
Come photography tour time we got into the car and it became a game of racing for light.
We started at the windows 95 wallpaper spot.
This involved pulling onto the side of a highway, scrambing going down the embankment of an overpass and wading waist deep into grass for the perfect angle.
Then we moved to the Gladiator ending scene. To get here, we wound our way up and down various semi steep roads, down the back driveway of a school before wading through more grass.
From this angle, outside of the wheel marks of mowed lawn, it would be difficult to discern what era we were in. We rested here for a good long while, crouched on the heelside, watching rippling waves of grass fields and feeling the breeze, waiting for Alfredo to take a smoke as we heard his tales as a Reportage photographer. And tales Alfredo had, from stories of how he gained the trust of DRC Congo generals to facing down guns in the inner streets of LA in his search.
The sun was starting to set, so we set out towards another set of hilltops, turning up and down more roads, questionable roads, then finally definitely not roads.
Alfredo continued to tell us tales of his time as a reportage photographer as we watched the light change and the sun set —
— before we finally raced back to catch Montepulciano at night.
Tuscany day! Of course Pokin booked us another full day tour, so I was forced up at 7am along with everyone else for breakfast and to get on the road.
Turns out our car was stored halfway across the city, so they needed time to fetch the car for us. I could have slept more had I known this! Someone failed at planning.
Some time that felt like 30 minutes later, the car pulled up in front of the hotel, and it was time to navigate out of Firenze. A little less stressful out than getting in. The bollards were down, so a few left turns and we were out of town (though it still gave us a scare to see the poliza with their lights on behind us.)
I was excited about Tuscany. I enjoyed my France trip to Provence 10 years ago and it felt like Tuscany would be similar.
We were staying in a place called Villa Cicolina, and after a couple of hours on to the autostrada, we pulled up.
And we were all promptly glad we got the full deal on car insurance. The place was very lush, but they also left branches draped over the driveway. In fact, the bushes were so dense we weren’t sure at first if we had gone up the right street, and Nicholas had to very grumpily back down the driveway while the car proximity sensors beeped madly at us because the bushes were so close.
Eventually we arrived at the right front entrance, to the surprise of the owners.
“You’re here very early,” she remarked.
I agree, I thought. No one should be forced to travel this early.
“Oh it’s because we have a tour booked,” answered Pokin.
Our rooms weren’t ready, but we were able to leave our bags while I scouted the property. Definitely reminds me of our trip to France. Lots of flowers. Looks good.
Nicholas parked the car in the parking lot down the street away from the bushy roads. I made sure to greet him on his return. He looked a bit grumpy.
Then it was time for our tour. Pokin booked a tour with a guide named Chiara from Montalchino Wine Tours. The itinerary was an olive oil tasting, a visit to a dairy farm, and a wine tasting. I wasn’t interested in any of those so I mostly planned to nap in the bag at first.
The olive oil place they stopped at was named Frantoio Fregoli. It was definitely not olive oil season so most of the machinery was disassembled, but the owner Francesco came by to give us an explanation of everything. He also showed us how the machinery worked. That got my curiousity piqued. I got out to take a look.
We learned that the highest quality olives are harvested around October when they are still green, and at time, only 10% yield is possible. But olive oil harvested then has the highest percentage of polyphenols. If you harvest closer to December, you can have a higher oil percentage but there is major flavour and polyphenols loss. Temperature too, affects the percentage and the ideal temperatures are between 10oC-27oC. Francesco walked us through their machinery designed to cool the production so that the temperatures never exceed 27oC.
We also learned that good quality olive oil starts to lose its number of polyphenols once opened. Try to use up your olive oil within weeks! Organic olive oil at the property had close to 800 polyphenols, whereas their regular olive oil had around 400. Every year, olive oil loses around 100 polyphenols. Finicky stuff!
Francesco demonstrated how to do a proper olive oil tasting (you want to draw air in through your teeth), and we learned that Tuscan Olive oil has a peppery bitter taste. We tried to buy some olive oil (still waiting to pay), and then we were on our way.
We had time to kill before lunch, so Chiara took us to Pienza. Unlike many of the other towns in the region, Pienza was built during peaceful times, so it didn’t have the typical fortifications common in the area.
Pienza as it looks now came to be thanks to Pope Pius II. Story has it that Pope Pius II was born in the region back when Pienza was known as a small village named Corsignano. He felt like as pope, he should come from a more beautiful and representative town for a pope, so he had Pienza rebuilt for use as his summer residence. Pienza, “city of Pius,” is known as an ideal Renaissance town, and was one of the first towns to apply urbanist planning concepts that were later applied to other cities across Europe. It also seemed to be the centre point for many spots around Tuscany. It was super hot and sunny so I wasn’t that up to explore, but we snapped a few photos before heading on to lunch.
Our next stop was to Il Casale, a Dairy Farm that produced a variety of pecorino cheeses. This was when Pokin learned that Pecorino cheeses described any kind of sheep’s milk cheese.
Apparently cheeses were brought in by the Sardinians. Tuscany used to be a really cheap region, and so many Sardinians immigrated to the area, bringing along their cheese technique.
Il Casale was perched up on the top of a hill, with beautiful views of the surrounding countryside.
I was impressed. I got a few pics. Everyone sat to eat lunch. The food was good. For them. They liked some sort of salad leaf named mizuna (portaluca in english). I didn’t. I’m not a goat.
Then it rained. On all of us. I was less happy about that. This giant raindrop landed perfectly into Pokin’s espresso cup which splashed coffee all over her. That was a little amusing.
The next day, we started with a hearty breakfast at the Art Hotel Commercianti where I was surprised to see candy being served for breakfast.
Then it was time to begin our quest for a laundromat. By now, Pokin and Nicholas were low on clean underwear. I told them if they just wore a tunic like I did and stopped being so reliant on pants they wouldn’t be in this kind of predicament. Of course they didn’t listen.
After setting in, we decide it’s time for some lunch. We started exploring around until we found a charcuterie place. It kinda just looks like what we normally eat at home.
Bologna is also known for Le due torri, or the Two Towers, built in from 1109-1119 by the Asinelli family. I don’t know what it is with Italian buildings and the fact they like to lean, but these towers lean. Something about the south ground. Apparently there are 9 towers in Italy like this.I guess at least they are beig stabilized so it’s really more of a threat to themselves!
Finally we peeked in the Basilica di San Petronio and called it good for the city.
Oh as a last fact, Bologna is not the birthplace of Bolognese sauce. They do have a kind of meat ragu, but we were told definitely they were absolutely unrelated.
We’re in Bologna for two nights, but let me tell you about the night before when we got here.
Because of our packed day, it was already getting late.
Then Bologna is one of those restricted cities were the instructions for driving in are, to say the least, dicey. There are traffic zones everywhere that you are not allowed to drive in – even worse, they fine you and you don’t even know it till years later.
We didn’t want to run the risk so we tried our best to follow instructions as well as we could, be really instructions were wanting. This makes it look way simpler than it actually was.
What this map fails to show are just how narrow the streets are. It does show all the no go streets, but because of the fact that we were driving a ‘large’ SUV to fit all 4 of us and our luggage, just because a street wasn’t no go didn’t mean we could actually FIT down that street.
Nicholas was not having fun trying to figure out how to get places. Sometimes we’d be trying to fit down a street, when a car would come the opposite direction and then it was a stalemate. Who would try to reverse into a little crevice to allow the other to pass. Stress levels were high.
We follow the map until we get to a large city square, blocked by police. Oh great. We pull up to the police and notice they are blocking the way because there is a giant mob of people in the square, obviously celebrating something. I assume they must be here to celebrate my arrival, but nobody seems to agree with me. We try to tell the police where we are trying to get to – a hotel that should be nearby. They point directly ahead, towards the mob of people. “Really?” we think, “through this crowd?” – Nicholas starts to drive. We notice in the rear view mirror the police officer chasing after us. No, not through the crowd, ahead and to the right he corrects, down a dead end alley way that looks like it shouldn’t fit our car, that is also blocked off by people in chairs.
After narrowly escaping mowing down a celebrating crowd of locals, we find the hotel and thankfully pass the keys off to hotel staff who is able to drive the car to wherever it’s supposed to actually go. Phew.
We’re in an Art hotel, it seems neat.
But hold up — what exactly is happening outside? We decided to check it out.
It turns out it’s a festival or something for the church, and the local bishop is visiting with a procession and a whole big celebration. Stupid. I’m just going to pretend they actually are here for me.
After calling it an early night, we got up early for a packed road trip driving day.
Today, the goal was to get on the road in Rovererto where we could hit up the oldest coffee shop in the world. Bontadi Coffee Roasters was founded in 1790 and they have a whole coffee museum dedicated to it! We got in right before they were open, but they were kind enough to let us in.
After seeing the museum, of course we had to go get some coffee, so we wandered into the square to find some.
Then, because we had a packed schedule, it was onwards to Verona.
Verona is now in the Veneto region of Italy, and we could start to see the transition away from more German influences towards Roman and Italian. Verona is most famous for being the setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. There’s also a roman amphitheatre which I was eager to see, called the Verona Arena. Naturally, a question I had was what on earth is the difference between an arena, a colosseum, and an amphitheaters? I can’t say I really know, other than it seems like there is only one Colosseum — the one in Rome. Turns out the Verona Arena is older than the Colosseum, and was used as a practice ground. It was built in 30 AD and is one of the oldest structures remaining.
Since we were going to see the Colosseum later, we decided not to go in, but we did camp out across the Arena to enjoy some aperol spritzes.
After lunch, we went to look for La Casa di Giulietta, which is the home of Cappello family and the inspiration for Romeo and Juliet (hence Juliet’s balcony). It was pretty crowded and touristy so we didn’t spend so much time there, but had to see it.
The next morning we got up, had our respective breakfasts, and went off to get the rental car.
It’s not a long drive, our destination was just a couple hours south in Trento where we would relax, spend the afternoon as a staging ground so we can start the next day bright and early.
It was a tough balance, trying to find the right rental car as we needed one that could fit everything, but not so big we had to deal with difficulty parking. It’s because of the car too that we specifically had to find hotels that had parking, preferably free.
Car acquired, time to hit the road!
Trento is the third largest Italian town in South Tyrol, and also a university town. We got settled in, wandered around town went out for dinner before starting on our trip tradition – to hunt down gelato every night.
After a very relaxing stay at Castel Frasburg and a memorable birthday celebration with our friends, it was time to wave goodbye, and head over to Bolzano to meet up with my bud’s parents.
My bud’s dad and his wife Jane had always wanted to explore Italy, so as a treat since we were there already we decided to road trip from Northern Italy down through Tuscany over to Rome.
First stop, Bolzano.
Bolzano is the capital city of South Tyrol in Northern Italy. It’s also a region known for it’s high quality of life.
We went to the train station to pick up my bud’s dad Bob and his wife Jane, had a Bavarian style dinner of meats and sausages, and retired in preparation for our road trip!
It’s the middle of the pandemic. Nobody is going anywhere. Suddenly Nicholas gets a message from his friend Mark’s fiancee. They are getting married. They want to be very careful with Covid, so they aren’t inviting anybody, but Nicholas convinces them that it would be okay if he drives up directly, quarantines for a few days and has a small bachelor party for Mark and attends the wedding.
At first I was suspicious, a bachelor party? During the pandemic? But then I remembered, Mark is one of Nicholas’s old gaming friends, and they will party like the bunch of nerds they are. What did they do? Soda, junk food and video games. I can get behind parties like this.
Since we were up here already, we took the time to visit my bud’s mom. Outdoors. Masks on of course.
Then it was a road trip back home. We took the time to stop by Mono lake and grabbed some photos.
Now that Pokin’s joined YPO, she’s making an effort to meet the members more. “The Couples retreat is one of the best ways to get to know the members,” Val (the chapter manager) told Pokin. So she signed up to go on the retreat, which happened to be at a place called Powder Mountain.
Last year this time, we went skiing at Snowbird which was pretty great, so I was excited. The place is called Powder Mountain because normally there is a lot of powder. Ski time! Hot cocoa time!
Except due to some freak weather phenomenon they actually had no new snow and everything was pretty icy…I guess we’ll just have to come back again next year to get proper skiing in.
Still, I do remember my bud taking advantage of the snow and going skiing. It was a work day, and while he was skiing the servers at work crashed. His employees messaged him saying “help, the servers are down”. He took out his phone at the top of the mountain, connected to the systems remotely, fixed the problem and then took this photo to show where he was and continued skiing. That’s productivity 101 right there.
