Montepulciano, Tuscany and Roma

Some quick notes on our day in Montepulciano, which is a fabulous and charming hilltop town in the heart of Tuscany.

We walked up narrow, steep cobblestone roads with shops and restaurants on each side.


shopping


They have many wine rooms, and unlike Napa where you go to the winery for tasting, here they have the tastings right in these beautiful and inviting shops all along the Corso of the town. They all have cheeses to taste and sell, pastas, sauces and herbs and flavors of all sorts.

tasting a bruschetta topping, which is also good for pasta, The white stuff in right tray is lard for tasting, no thanks.

lunch on Terrazza Panoramica of beautiful restaurant on the Corso, overlooking Bella Tuscany


Truly bella Tuscany

more of the wine tasting rooms, they are so pretty, The best wine in Montepulciano is Nobile (no-be-lay).

The next morning we went a local weekly outdoor market. See all the chickens on the rotisserie in back, they smelled so good. These are like our Mexican "roach coaches" but not really the same at all.

We later drove about 30 min to Cortona, strolled around that hilltop town and had a nice lunch around 4. All the restaurants close at 2.30 and reopen at 7.30P so we stopped in this bar.

It started to rain so we made our way on the narrow winding roads back to our Estruco to prepare for 2 hour drive Roma the next morning.

Roma: All roads lead to Rome....except for the one we were on!. It took us 3 hrs to get to the car return place in Borghese Gardens in Rome center.

The good thing is we really got to see the city. The romantic notion of living in Rome is just that, a romantic notion. The very center where the rich live in glamorous apartments over the designer windows of retail shops and overlooking the monuments is the romantic notion part. The regular apartments, in the outskirts as well as right in Rome, are tons of ugly, 60's apts or run down classics, with graffiti where all the rest of everyone lives. (see more on graffiti below). It is VERY expensive for the locals and many of the young people have 2-3 jobs just to make it. We are soooo fortunate where we live and how we live, temporary real estate pricing blip not withstanding.

We hooked up with a ex pat former legal secretary with major LA law firm who has lived here for a year. 40ish, she lives with a room mate who she did not know, shares a 2 bdrm 1 bath, is glad she has a washing machine (tho it takes over an hour to do one load and then everything has to hang dry) and takes 45 min to get to work in city center via bus, metro, bus. Now, yes, she only pays $600 her half of rent. If one can pay $3000 a month or so, things would be different, at least in housing.

And do I mean there is graffiti. It is everywhere, on every wall, every building, every bridge, everywhere but the very city center. The Italians (and Europeans) take it is stride and consider it local art and say "they do not touch the monuments", which is just a matter of time as far as I can see. We associate graffiti with gangs etc, while over here that is not the connotation and thus far more accepted.

Our beautiful Rome hotel room had a very unfortunate thing that guests face when entering and made me very crazy... A SCALE!! Yikes. We were brave enough to get on and Art is the same as when he left and I am up about 3 lbs. Actually, it was pretty good news.

I won't bore you with the cliches of us standing in front of more monuments and churches. The most interesting thing is we met up with Cragnotti relatives who live here in Roma. Last year they contacted me on the Internet and are long lost distance cousins of Art whom we did not know existed. All Cragnottis are related, it is an unusual name and only started about 150-200 yrs ago when the Greek family migrated to Sicily and made up the name Cragnotti to fit in with the Italians.

Marcello Cragnotti with family and our ex pat friend Grace upper far right who helped translate.

Monday, it will be Arrivederci Roma