We Can Get Lost Riding...or We Can Get Lost Going to Dinner

Not every day is a 10, but today was.  We left Marco and Margherita's house just after eight...no breakfast or coffee, just Italian hugs and molto thanks for a splendid time.  This couple is going to go far...you can take that to the bank.  One more little family story...Margherita told us that too much rain ruins the olive harvest.  The olives need to be full of oil when they are harvested, not water.  The olive pressers send out some sort of invitation, and you get a time when you bring your olives in to be pressed.  Margherita does not want her olives mixed with another grower who might be bringing an inferior quality of olive.  When she and Marco took their olives in last fall, she did not go home, even though it is uncommon for women to have anything to do with work from the fields.  She waited with the hundreds and hundreds of pounds of olives and listened to the comments of the pressers..."the color is good", "the flavor is good"..."whose oil IS this"?  And she smiled coyly and walked over to the pressers and said, "It is my oil."

For the first time on our trip, Patty and I both used our Garmins on a route that I had mapped at home.  Easy peasy.  Her Garmin 800 is a little different from my 705, and there is something very comforting about following a purple ribbon on a map screen that is headed in the direction you know you need to go.

We were ahead of schedule and since we hadn't had lunch, we stopped at a little bar.  The temperatures were in the 80's and we had done a bunch of climbing so we were sweating...profusely.  The owner immediately motioned for me to follow him.  I thought he was showing me where the toilette was, but instead, he opened a door to a small market, where there were meats and cheeses and bread.  Why yes, proscuitto and formaggio...please.  We asked for something cold to drink and he brought us two glasses of white wine with ice cubes in the glass.  I thought it was okay, but Patty couldn't finish hers.  I think this is a very normal lunch in Italy...this morning around 10 we had stopped for a cappuccino and some men who were working nearby came in and ordered a sandwich, salami or proscuitto and cheese on a hard roll along with a tumbler glass full of wine.

It wasn't too hard to find Daniela, our B&B host, but we jokingly considered telling her she was going to have to move down the hill.  She is a former grade school teacher who loves to travel and loves people.  What a wonderful find for us.  We sat out on her patio and had cold water and talked about travel, and Tuscany, and truffles.  It seems San Miniato is the white truffle capital of the world.  Every year in November, people from all over the world come for the truffle festival.  Daniela and her husband André have two dogs that are truffle hunters, because you either have to have dogs or pigs to sniff out the truffles.

She suggested a restaurant that cooks authentic Tuscan fare within walking distance for dinner so off we went at 7 pm.  We knew it was an AgriTourismo and walked up the road to the first one we came across.  A long table on the terrace was set for 15 and two or three people were standing nearby.  It looked like it might be a celebration of some sort.  Patty saw someone come out of the kitchen and asked if we might have dinner.  Yes, it was okay.  Yikes, totally out of my comfort zone.

We waited another ten minutes or so and a crowd of people formed, some German, some Italian.  We all sat down and food started appearing.  Crostini with a creamed mushroom topping, also a meat topping with carrots and tomatoes.  Then spaghetti with tomatoes and ham on a bed of pesto.  Later, thin slices of beef rolled around zucchini and cheese.  Tiramisu for dessert and chianti to drink.  The table was quiet at first, but we soon realized that none of these people knew each other.  We talked to them about where they were from, what they would do in San Miniato, whether Germany would win the World Cup.  They were all, however, staying at the AgriTurismo, which was more that we could say.  We felt like party crashers...very lucky party crashers.  The sunset off the terrace was amazing, there was a peacock on a nearby shed, and the owner of the AgriTurismo was dining with us, intent on making sure everyone was comfortable and full.  It was...magical.

We walked back to the B&B in the dark, laughing about how our misstep had turned into an adventure.  Daniela was so happy that we had had a good time, because her heart is to share her love of Tuscany with the people who come and stay with her.  We asked her a favor.  Yes, it was a little forward...but we asked her if she had any limo cello.  Turns out, she makes her own.  So we sat out on her patio for the better part of an hour sampling her limo cello, another liqueur called Mirto which is made primarily in Sicily, and one called Agricanto which is a sweeter liqueur from Trento.  Thank you, Daniela, for making our day here so very special!