Stranded in Tuscany: Day 2

The view from our hotel room. We actually moved rooms, to have one with a bathtub. The room is up on the third floor, and we preferred our garden view, but this room is definitely better for our extended stay. Otto was very reluctant to leave the old room, however, with its painted ceilings, and he has asked if we could have both.



The boys needed a "down" morning, so they watched "Madagascar."



We returned to Colle di Val d'Elsa.



Another day, another pizza. This one might look sort of cardbboardy, but it got pretty high marks from Otto, especially for being a bar pizza. Plus it has the bonus of being in a lovely square with a fountain (the same one with the water fountain where we played with our Playmobil knights).



More fountain play.




Until Otto fell in.



Otto was cold and wet, so we rushed back to the hotel, but not without stopping to take a quick look at the city from the bridge.



Otto took a bath to warm up, and Max joined him.



Feeling much better.



Played Legos in the hotel's garden. They turned the empty Pringle's container into a jail.



Our hotel.



We somehow convinced the boys to return to Colle di Val d'Elsa for dinner.



We had spotted this restaurant earlier in the day (shortly before the falling in the fountain incident), but it was closed for lunch. It turns out it was pretty lucky we had gotten to spend a quiet afternoon at the hotel, because the boys were agreeable to having dinner here with us, which turned out to be a long lovely meal at one of Italy's slow food restaurants (we didn't realize they were a declared "slow food" establishment until we were on our way out, two and a half hours later).




The children's drawings on the menu were encouraging.



When we arrived, the restaurant was empty, except for the man who sat at the front table, working on a computer. He got up and smiled to greet us, then led us to a table. I was a bit surprised there was no one else dining at all, but shortly after we arrived, another two tables filled, and by the time we were eating, another two tables were full.

Their pane e coperto included a flatbread and olive plate.



The Officina makes their own organic wine. We got an entire bottle of it for 6 euros (a little bit more than 8 dollars). Their wine glasses were etched with the restaurant's name.



Crostini with pecorino cheese and thinly sliced pears, drizzled with honey. It was so good, I didn't even stop to take a picture until it was almost gone.



Martin had a warm cheese that was akin to gorgonzola. It was sort of like a soup, and it was served with celery for swirling in the cheese...there was lots more celery, but Max ate a lot of it, so happy to have his favorite vegetable.



For my primo piatto (first course), our waiter recommended his favorite pasta, which is presented in a simple, light sauce of olive oil, bread crumbs, and black pepper (when he described it, I was thinking pepper, meaning sweet peppers, but I have to say, this was even better than what I was thinking). All the pasta is handmade, even this long thin pici, which is like a thick, uneven spaghetti. It was so delicious.



There's our sweet waiter taking another couple's order. He had no problem going over every dish with us, taking a long time to discuss the ingredients of each.



Martin's secondo: trippa (tripe) in a ragu. Not for me, but he loved it.



My secondo was some sort of bird (he likened it to chicken, but I suppose many things are compared to chicken), which was stuffed with something else that I did not understand. I have no idea what I was eating, but it was really good. Even Max and Otto agreed.



We ordered the boys a simple pasta in a ragu, which they also liked, but they mostly played their DSis while we ate. It was quite something how occupied these little devices kept them for such a long dinner.



They were interested in dessert, however.









These guys gave us a taste of their Vin Santo, which they had paired with cantuccini, the small almond biscotti that is a speciality of the region, especially when paired with this sweet dessert wine.



It was a thoroughly wonderful meal, from the cozy, simple but lovely atmosphere, the pacing of the food, the patience and smiles of the waiter, the opportunity to watch other people enjoying their amazing meals, the astonishingly delicious food itself, and we were sure it was our best meal in Italy.

We left feeling very lucky to have found it, lucky for the circumstances that led us there at that particular day and time, lucky that our lovely boys were agreeable to a long long dinner, lingering what was probably an unreasonable amount of time in their opinions.

As we headed back for our car, we walked through the city walls, and everything seemed to be magical and glowing.

Stranded in Tuscany: Day 1

Yeah, there are definitely worse things than being stranded an extra week in Tuscany. Instead of flying home, we took a day trip to San Gimignano. It will come as no surprise that the first stop was for gelato.



Then we stopped to smell the wisteria. And the lilacs. So nice.



The boys tried to catch this lizard, but he was not having it.



A couple of the towers.



This small town once boasted 76 towers, but only 14 of them remain. It's hard to imagine that 62 more of them would actually fit. It is another walled town, open only to pedestrian traffic, so it's a perfect village to explore with kids. Except for the fact that it is very hilly, the shopkeepers are not all that interested in children with their desire to touch and feel things, and some kids would rather be carried than to walk another step. Mostly, though, the kids walked. Fueled by gelato and pizza, I suppose.

Speaking of pizza, we have had so much of it during our stay that we had wished we had kept a pizza critic's diary, recording all of the pizza we sampled and making note of its pizza's attributes. When we realized we would be here an entire week more, we decided to start it. This pizza from the tiny shop just off the main campo in San Gimignano ranks second, just behind the fabulous pizza we ate in San Miniato.



We sat in the campo, and the boys wrote in their pizza journals, and I wrote a couple of postcards, and then we just sat drawing for a long time. A wedding party arrived and departed while we sat in the plaza, the shadows of the towers and walls stretched over us, and soon it was too cold in our spot to stay much longer.





We had been sitting on the ledge of the Palazzo Communale, the building which houses an art museum and also access to the highest tower still standing in San Gimignano. We suddenly wondered what we were doing just sitting there when there was adventure to be had. We climbed the 218 steps to get to the top and get a view of the whole city and the surrounding countryside from very high above. We were all hanging on for dear life during the climb, so there is no documentation of that, except for a blurry shot of the entire staircase. But let's just say it was very steep and felt a bit treacherous.



The view from the top:



My ears popped as we were going up the stairs. I was thinking about zooming up the elevator in the John Hancock building, how my ears always pop for that as well, how you are going so fast and so much higher but feel pretty safe in your little elevator box. This tower may be closer in height to the Hancock's neighbor the Water Tower, but this climb to the top involves stairs with open treads, winding around and around and encouraging you to look above or below at your progress (or lack of it). The final jaunt is to climb a ladder which has an open area in which a skinny 5 year old could slide right through. For this reason, I wanted to be behind both kids as they climbed down, so that if they did indeed fall, it would be into me. They agreed to this, and I started down first, then Otto, so I was "protecting" him, and then Martin was supposed to go between Otto and Max. But Martin was still taking a final shot of the view, and Max scrambled down right after Otto. This caused a major upset for Otto, who felt that if he had to be "monitored" for his descent, Max should follow suit.

We were at a standstill on the ladder, and we called for Martin to come right away, but Max kept climbing down, until we were all three sort of packed together, and we stayed in a standoff position here for a minute or two while Otto sorted out his wishes. There were other people who needed to pass, so we finally got off the ladder and were standing on the platform between the ladder and the stairs leading back down. Otto was crying, and a kind older couple assumed he (or actually, they assumed "she") was frightened because of the height, and they offered to take "her" down with them (which was bizarre in itself, even if it was meant to be a kind offer...if Otto had indeed been frightened, I don't think he would find comfort in my handing him off to complete strangers to aid him in going down the stairs). But anyway, I thanked them and for some reasons explained to them it was okay, Otto wasn't scared, he was just mad. They looked confused but carried on. And it seemed like this helped Otto sort it out, somehow. Because then he said he just wanted to go back up and come down with me again, but this time, he would go first, without me behind him. So that's what we did. Martin stayed at the very bottom, so that there was at least a vague chance he could be of help should Otto fall. But of course, Otto was quite competent and climbed down just fine.

And finally, we were ready to walk down the remaining steps to reach the safety of the ground.

Down below again, we had cafe lattes and latte caldo (hot milk), to which we added our own chocolate powder (we've been carrying this around, since ciccolato caldo (hot chocolate) in Italy is quite a different thing than we are used to, more like liquid chocolate.



Here's how you do graffiti in Italy:


The shadow of the bell tower on the campo.



While we sat, the bells began to ring, and the boys skipped around in circles and literally climbed up the walls of the nearby buildings (there are all these rings attached to the sides of buildings, on which you would once tie up your horses, but they find them to be good gymnastic equipment).

We peeked into a local shop specializing in wild boar, a speciality of the region. We have not tried Tagliatelle al Cinghiale, the regional pasta dish featuring a stew of wild boar, but with all this extra time we've got, it's sure to happen.



Outside the walls.



Typical Tuscan landscape.



We had a simple dinner in our hotel room.

What Almost Was the Last Day

This was scheduled to be the last day of our vacation, and we had thought we would spend it in San Gimignano, a nearby town, the "best preserved medieval town in Europe," with its 14 towers, two of which can be climbed, its wall, its shops, its fabulous pizza. But we were also not sure if we would fly out on Tuesday, and although the chances seemed to be improving by the time we had breakfast, we could not decide whether to spend our last day doing something fun or on the phone trying to figure out our situation. The latter scenario just sort of took over, and we ended up spending a quiet day, mostly around our hotel and in the nearby town, where we went to visit the laundromat—we knew if we didn't do our laundry, we would definitely be stranded, and we figured it would be pretty nice to take home clean clothes anyway, so this is how we chose to spend our (potential) last afternoon in Tuscany.

We headed to downtown Colle di Val d'Elsa to the sunny lavenderia.



While the clothes were washing, we headed to the camp for some car racing and some coffee.







We ran out of coins before our laundry was dry, and the kind innkeepers allowed us to borrow their drying racks. We felt kind of embarrassed that we were spread out all over the hotel, both with our laundry and all our toys and papers, while we began making calls and trying to figure out if our flight would happen. But the hotel was pretty much deserted, the bar was empty except for us, and it was the kind of quiet down day we needed, so it was all good.



By evening, we still had no word of whether we would fly our or not and were instructed to call back at 11 p.m., so we had no option but to behave as though we would fly out in the morning. We packed up all our suitcases and started to get ready for bed, in anticipation of an early wake-up. But when we finally found an update from the airlines at 10:30 p.m., we learned for certain our flight had been canceled, and we spent the next hour or more trying to get through to Swiss Airlines, with no luck whatsoever. We finally decided to go to sleep and get up at 3 a.m. to call when the lines might be less busy. This worked, but the first available flight we could find was for next Tuesday, so it looks like we are spending another week in sunny Tuscany. There are worse things, of course.