Tuesday October 28th:
The day before was a travel and rest day to get into our hotel base in the Tuscany area. We had our first day trip planned with our guide Manuele. He was sitting right outside of our door 30 minutes early ready to go. Our ride for these tours was a new Mercedes van with room for eight. We quickly learned that Manuele was going to be a great guide. He was funny and very upbeat right from the beginning.
Today we were headed east of our base towards the Tuscan town of Volterra. We did not know much about it other than it was the fictional home of the vampire council in the Twilight series of books and movies. During the planning of the trip our guide was very much excited about us visiting this city for several reasons. The Twilight thing was a bonus for Cindy. So on the drive there I asked Manuele if he knew why a mom from the USA would be so interested in visiting Volterra. He quickly responded, "oh, you want to see vampires; you are talking about Twilight." He continued on from there to let us know that he was in the second movie, New Moon, as an extra. We actually had a great guide that is also an expert on the Twilight filming locations. Who is this guy? He then told us that Volterra may not be the best place to go, that in fact his home town of Montepulciano is where the scene from the movie was actually filmed, in the main town square. Then he told us that his town is also close by where they filmed some scenes from Gladiator. That happens to be one of my all time favorite movies. So shortly into this first trip we started talking about changing our plan for one of the following days. Montepulciano was not on our schedule and it was pretty far south, but with this news we had to think about our plan.
In the mean time we continued towards Volterra. We pulled into an empty parking area at the bottom of a hill outside of the city walls. This is something I did not realize about the Tuscany region. I knew we would see the vineyards and rolling hills but I knew nothing about all of the small towns. Most of them are medieval or earlier and all seem to have fortified city walls on top of the hill surrounding the older parts of each town. In this case Manuele had stopped outside of the wall to show us something I was not expecting.
This first site was some Roman ruins that have only been discovered in the last fifty years. It was a large gathering area with a theater. You could still see some of the original marble floor on the stage area. He them told us how this town dates back before the Romans to the Etruscan people. This is where we get the modern day reference to this region, Tuscany. We did have to walk up a pretty good hill for this first part of the tour. It was one of the last times that we would have to do so. Manuele had a plan.
We made it up to the city wall and shortly we were entering this back alley work shop. This was the first of many great surprise experiences. It was an alabaster workshop. The first thing that Manuele showed us was a group of old pictures on a poster. He was showing us the soccer field that used to be over the Roman ruins that we just saw. The hillside that was now dug out to reveal the ruins was a soccer field. It was cool to see the proof and that it was so recent relative to the time of the Romans. Soon we were inside of this workshop watching this guy create these alabaster pieces. Hutch bought the one that he was working on as we arrived. The guy allowed the kids to pick out their piece of alabaster and he made them a little keepsake while they watched. It was fun to see the kids so interested in this. This was a great surprise and a place that we never would have found on our own.
Both of the kids have their souvenir prominently displayed in their room.
Next Manuele gave us some information about the town, some instructions about what to see and then he took off. This was another great part of having a guide. He gave us some free time to walk around and walked back to the van to move it. He picked us up on the other side to make it easier on us and to save time.
Besides Certaldo this was our first Tuscan town. It was striking to see the age of everything. This church below was one that we visited the inside part too. They have some music playing, monk chanting type music. I would not describe it as soothing, it was more strange and something that I really stood out as part of the overall atmosphere.
Manuele had pointed out that the leaning tower of Pisa was not the only thing leaning in Tuscany. Some of the city walls you can see have sunk in places. Cindy noticed the columns in this church were not strait any longer either.
Outside of the church was a octagonal building that is the Baptistery of San Giovanni. I used a flash to get the below picture. It was very dark except for a bright spot light on this statue. There was a projection video way up on the ceiling above the statue and really sinister music playing loudly. It was very unsettling, more than in the church. The kids did not like this one at all. I can't figure out if the modern day vampire interest has resulting in the city playing it up a bit for tourism or if it really was like this all of the time. The whole place had a strange feel to it but I don't know if that is manufactured or genuine. I always think about these kind of things and I would like to think I can gauge pretty well if something is not authentic. This is not a busy tourism time of year but to me this whole city was a little off.
We spent most of the morning in Volterra, snapped a couple more pictures then met up with Manuele outside of the gate.
Our next destination for the day was the more touristy town of San Gimignano. Manuele gave us an option for a restaurant in the town or a farm outside of the city with views. We chose the farm. He called them up to get us a table with a view. It was a pretty good view.......
What a great meal this was. We had to do nothing as Manuele spoke to the staff to get us going. Did I mention that he told us he is a certified sommelier? During our windshield time driving around Tuscany we leaned all sorts of stuff about wine. He got us set up with a three course meal, with wine pairings. This place was really amazing. Nearly everything that we ate and drank for this meal was grown or produced and made fresh from this farm. They had olive trees and grapevines as you would expect, but they also grew all of the other fresh vegetables and live stock.
While we were there several tour buses dropped off people that went to a different part of the farm to do wine tasting. This did not impact us, we just some the mass of people in the distance and would look the other direction to our view.
Awesome surprise number two for the day. Manuele took us down to the live stock area to see the cows. This is the white Chianina breed of Tuscany. I did not get any good pictures of the cows. Cindy noted how long the legs are and how different they look from cows we are used to seeing. It was really fun to see the kids interact with the animals. They only had a couple of the brown cows, I just liked the picture with both kids. All of the cows that had no hay directly in front of them were quickly given more by the children. They had a lot of fun in the barn with the cows.
We had driven through part of San Gimignano on the way to lunch. Now we returned to tour around. This city is much more touristic due to the many towers that rise above the hill. I guess people see it and want to check it out. There are only about 13 left now, down from over 60 that once existed. It is so funny to hear how people used to spend their money once they had to much to know what to do with it. They just built tall towers to show off. Nothing like that happens in the USA today, right? I guess as long as there is wealth people are going to find a way to show it off.
I don't remember getting a lot of history about this town other than the towers. It was very similar to the other towns that we saw during our stay with the exception of so many towers.
Once again Manuele let us roam around and have some time to explore. We found several town square areas and visited a world famous gelato place. It was really good, but I think I blew it with my flavor choices.
It was starting to get late in the day but it was still just warm enough to eat some gelato. Katherine found a bit of sun to stand in between some towers to stay warm. Paw Paw and David chilled out by the old well with the sun setting behind them.
It really was a great time of year for our visit. We had a few people around at times, but for the most part we could go where ever we wanted with no crowds. The weather was in the low sixties and it would get a little chilly after the sun went down. Perfect if you ask me.
We found Manuele right where he said outside of the city wall. He took us back to our castle where we enjoyed some takeout pizza late in the evening after our lunch finally digested. It was time to get some rest. The next morning was a train ride back to Florence to see the big city for the day.
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