So…dinner on Monday night. We went to one of the recommended restaurants – Osteria via San Giorgio. Very cute place; fun decorations. For starters, we both had fresh tomatoes with cipolini onions – add a little balsamic vinegar and WoW! Terrific! For mains, Linda had tortelli pasta, which was a longer version of ravioli, meat filled with a meat sauce; it was great! I ordered gnocchi, which came with pumpkin, cream sauce with nuts. It was good, but compared to the “angel pillows” of a few days ago, didn’t come close! Back to the hotel around 9 to a VERY rainy night! Sometime during the night I could hear the rain on the skylight right above; Linda said it really poured!
Up around 6:30 a.m. for showers and repacking of luggage…today is a “schlepping” day! The hotel called a cab for us, which arrived in minutes. We drove across the city to the bus station and finally got an explanation of all the tent construction that is going on everywhere. Apparently, starting this coming Friday, a comic convention will be in town for a week, attracting 50,000 people to Lucca! WHERE are they all going to go? The taxi driver said that traffic around the city (outside of the walls) comes to a virtual standstill, and NOTHING moves inside the walls at all! Talk about terrific timing! Would HATE to walk in as a dumb and happy tourist into the middle of that; talk about pure dumb luck avoiding it!
Bought our 3E tickets to the Pisa Aeropuerto and waited about 15 minutes or so for our bus. Stored our luggage underneath and away we went! We did have another chance to pass the Field of Miracles, and I know you’re not going to believe this, but that tower STILL is leaning! Humpf….The ride took a little less than an hour, and there we were – Pisa Airport! Found the shuttle bus stop for the rental car, which whisked us away in minutes to a large combined rental car facility. Picked up our car from Avis – little VW Polo; very cute, drives very nicely, and has enough storage capacity for all our things in the trunk. (The weather was supposed to be rainy all day, but actually we didn’t get any drops at all until we were in the rental car! Very thankful to the weather gods for that, for sure!) Mostly rainy off and on since then, but with only occasional periods of heavy rain; not bad at all for sightseeing and taking pictures!
Got the GPS (named Emmy because of her British accent) up and running, and followed her directions out onto the Autostrada. After escaping the traffic for Pisa, we headed off on to smaller and certainly more pleasant roads; took a bit over an hour to climb up the hills to San Gimignano. I left Linda off at the front gate, and found parking in our “normal” parking lot across the street. (I drove to the hotel twice, and the second time, either the car was too wide, or the roads had gotten narrower, but NEVER will do that again!) Found a front row parking spot, so didn’t take long to empty and lock up car and head in. Our room -- #11 – was ready for us…and as I told Linda, here it is ALL about the view! We opened up the drapes and shutters, and wow – the Tuscan countryside just drops away from town. I surely know why artists are inspired by the Tuscan countryside…beautiful!!—Linda We also have a nice balcony with table and chairs – if it clears up at all, we may try a picnic! The only problem is that with these thick stone walls, we do not have internet available in the room. However, they have a very nice lounge downstairs where I can get wifi, and it’s very comfortably fitted out with tables and chairs and sofas.
View from balcony of our room!
Arranged our belongings, and went in search of lunch. Literally right across the street was a small place selling pizza by the slice. I had mine with prosciutto, Linda with mushrooms – great crisp crust, and just right for lunch! We then walked through the town poking into shops and taking in the view. I really do think that San G is my favorite hill-top village! We did stop for gelato (one of the Tuscan necessities of life…) in a place that apparently participated in a world gelato championship! I had stracciatella and chocolate; Linda had Rosemary’s Baby and Vanilla. Rosemary’s Baby consisted of a combination of raspberry and rosemary; she said it was great!
So…back in the room now, for a short rest before we take off again to see more sights and then dinner!
Hoping for clearer days, lots of love!
m
x
No comments:
Post a Comment