Montalcino and the Tuscan Hill Towns

Tuscany: www.masterlyinactivity.com/europe/tuscany.jpg

We're staying with an italian lady named Annalisa who told us to call when we arrived in the city because her place was difficult to find. When we did she said "oh Nicole! I've been looking for you!" and picked us from the main piazza within minutes. She took us to the base of the town where her house sits overlooking the countryside and showed us our room. Spent the rest of the evening and the day after in Montalcino.

*The old ladies wear flowered moo-moos. You see them opening their shutters in the morning, staring out their windows in the afternoon, talking on the streets in the evening, and by the time you're walking home from dinner late at night, their all congregated at the base of the huge alleyways still talking: I think its because they took all to get down the hills and now they're too tired to get back up them.

*Everyone has a garden: most everyone has a vineyard, big or small. I saw one house with kiwis growing above the awning on the patio. And don't think that those little old italian ladies can't swing a pick-ax because we've clearly witnessed it.

*The town has a main wall that separates it from the countryside and if you walk to the western-most side of the town there's a church. The ground drops off after the church and you can sit on the benches behind the wall, next to the church and look out onto the small farm houses from above: red-tiled rooftops, chimneys, worn-away stone, vineyards and cypres trees. The fields are yellow from the wheat thats been cut away. The plots that are plowed are dark dark brown, almost black soil. None of it really seems real.

*Had gnocchetti with pomodoro sauce, bruschetta, polenta, and a creme caramel last night.

*Have to stop writing because we have to catch a bus but I feel unsatisfied. Montalcino is the most beautiful town we've seen. Can't wait to get the pictures back.