Volterra road trip.

 After a light Italian breakfast of toast, ham, boiled egg, yoghurt, a Cappuccino, 2 Americano’s and a couple of slices of torte, we hit the road for the return journey to Siena and then on to Volterra. Thinking the direct route seemed a bit boring we opted for a detour through Pienza and over to Montalcino, home of the famous Brunello wine. Arriving in town we found a parking lot a few steps below the town centre which had a few open spots. I’d researched it the night before and read a few reviews “ the place was just a few steps away from the city centre” posted by a European. “The place was far away from the city centre up a massive flight of stairs”-American!

It was about 20 stairs to the top and 200 yards to the first part of the old city.

 Our first stop was the Duomo, which was actually the Cathedral of San Salvatore, dating back some 1200 years.

Continuing on we found a second church, the Chiesa di San Agostino, the cloister area of which was home to a bike rental shop. The actual church was home to some impressive frescoes.

Following the street further we could see that every other retailer was a wine seller, often with their own cellar. Overlooking the entire town was an imposing castle with towers at each corner. A single doorway allowed entry into the main courtyard which featured a wine bar and steps up to the walls. 

Returning to the lower part of the town we found more wine shops. Some were almost supermarket in scale and offered tasting samples by way of card controlled machines containing upwards of 100 offerings at various prices. I presume one loaded the card to a required EURO amount and off you went.

Prices started at 3Euro and went to 11 or 22 for the limited editions. The wines ranged in price from 24Euro for a recent (2017) vintage with older bottles as high as 90 for 2015, 2016 offerings, with much older bottles as high as 400 euro for rare prize winning bottles.

Suffice to say, I left empty handed as we are planning some legs of our trip via Ryan Air with no checked luggage.

 We grabbed a quick lunch of pici pasta with olive oil and fresh tomatoes before returning to the car for the trip to Volterra. Travelling, initially through narrow and often steep declines we found ourselves getting passed rather frequently by locals who felt that 70 in a 50 zone was too slow, so riding 6 feet off my rear bumper, cellphone in hand,  cigarette in the other, lights flashing they would fly by, often on blind curves, missing opposing traffic by mere feet. 

 I sometimes found myself doing the same, sans hand accessories, behind slow moving vehicles that braked for every single turn- clearly tourists in automatics. ( I wonder how often they replace the brakes on those cars.)

As we approached Siena, the roads got better, wider and faster. With limits posted at 90 and me going 110-120 I was getting passed by Audis and Mercedes, well in excess of 150.

Part way to Florence we found ourselves back on secondary roads with lower limits and a steadily increasing rain shower. A local bus seemed to be setting the pace for the balance of the journey, as no one was risking their lives passing that one.

 We rolled into Volterra a little past 3:30, finding the hotel and getting our luggage inside just in time before the skies really opened up.

A steady downpour with occasional thunder continued until well past 10. 

With visibility extremely reduced we settled on a few snacks from the nearby Conad supermarket rather than look for restaurants. Susanna had a roast chicken leg and a cuppa noodles, while I settled for a few grapes, tomatoes on the vine and some local cheese. Not having purchased any vino, I made do with a bottle of Peroni red, thus completing a 4 course meal, so to speak, for under 10 Euro.

The down time did give me time to research the local sights as well as plan and book our train trips for the next few days, leading up to our Pisa to Catania flight on Thursday evening

 Like Montalcino, Volterra also had a large imposing castle near the centre. We struggled to find an entry point for a while before we realized it wasn’t really open to the public. The members of the public that did have access were probably not the type of people we’d want to associate with. Turns out that it is currently in use as a State Prison!

We spent the morning doing our usual tour of various churches as well as a couple of ancient Roman ruins. One was a reasonably well preserved Roman Theater with several sections of seating still intact as well as a sizeable part of the actual stage and it’s supporting columns.

We did spend some time and a little bit of cash in a locally owned alabaster shop, where the owner explained the different colours and the techniques for carving pieces, which ranged in size from wine bottle stoppers to 3 and 4 foot figurines.

We stopped for a quick lunch which turned out much longer than planned as my lamb chops came breaded and deep fried ( who does that? ) rather than grilled as I had requested. They did correct the error and only charged me half price. But by then the clouds had moved in and we faced a repeat of last nights downpour .Abandoning our plans for further exploration we splashed our way back to the hotel to dry everything off and listen to the thunder rolling through for several hours While the lights stayed on, not only was the hotel wifi down, but my cell phone network also crapped out, leaving me unable to check train schedules, route planners etc. 

 I do have a large scale tuscany map of the area which should suffice to find places, only it’s half the size of a king size bed, a little hard to open in a Fiat Panda.

 The trip tomorrow is fairly short, only to San Gimignano but we may include a few stops at other villages in the area to keep us occupied till check in time.