Today we had the morning off until 10:30 when we leave for the wine tasting. So Richard and I got up a little early and went back to the fortress so we could take pictures of the awesome views we saw last night. The weather here is my absolute favorite: chilly but sunny. We walked up along the wall for about an hour and a half just taking pictures of the views all the way around. It was pretty nice there this morning since there were only a few people running or walking compared to the throng of people all over the place yesterday. After finishing the lap around the walls we walked back and relaxed until it was time to head to the bus.
We rode for a little while through some more beautiful Tuscan landscape (a silly side note, the fact that the pronunciation is TuscAHny not TUHscany means that Pizza Hut pronounces it correctly, which makes me chuckle) before climbing up some treacherously narrow roads and making it to the winery. We first got a tour of the various cellars and got to learn a bit about the production of wine and what the different sizes mean. We even got to see their oldest bottle of wine; it was from the first year of production in 1870 (the family business had been around since the 12th century, but this particular winery began in the 1800s)! After the brief tour, we sat down to try some wine! We had various meats and cheeses with some Tuscan bread to give us a little something in our stomachs as he told us about the types we would be trying and demonstrated proper wine-tasting etiquette.
We were given a Rosso di Montalcino from 2009, a Morellino di Scansano from 2009, and a Brunello di Montalcino from 2005. The Brunello is their specialty there and was my favorite. The Morellino was also pretty good, but because they were presented as a sort of scale from good to best, after my initial tastings of the three it was difficult to go back to the first. All in all, it was a blast and I actually like the wine a lot, it did take a little while to get used to it (my first sip was not so good…). After finishing our tasting we had the opportunity to purchase some before getting back on the bus and going back to Siena.
When we got back home we just relaxed for a little while before deciding to venture out to the city to find the mysterious McDonalds of the city. We remembered seeing a sign or two pointing us in the direction of it, so we ended up wandering around for probably an hour having been guided by a total of two signs. At one crossroads we split up into 3 groups to look, and the Amazing Race was on. My group ended up getting to explore a ton of the outer area of the city, but no McDonalds. We actually ended up just beyond the track that Richard and I ran to yesterday, but it seemed much farther today because we were hungry, tired, and rained on. But no sour grapes here, any time I wander the city I am happy.
So we finally made it home after about three hours, where we found one of the other groups had already returned to look up the location on the Internet. So after they found it, we decided that a second try would be more fruitful. After finding the area that Google told us it would be, however, we were again McDonaldsless. We asked a British gentleman about it and he said it was about 40 minutes out and we would want to take a cab. After finding one and learning that it would be 20 euro for the trip, we finally gave up. As it turns out, the area where we all split up was only ten minutes away, which we earned when the third group came home to gloat. Anyway, after some organization and goofing off we all went out to dinner at a nearby Chinese place (don’t judge!).
It was pretty fantastic, I had shrimp fried rice and sweet and sour chicken with water and some pretty great little rice patty things that were kinda like flattened out packing peanuts. After dinner we walked back home and enjoyed some more relaxation before bed!
No comments:
Post a Comment