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Published: June 14th 2017
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Geo: 43.0929, 11.7824
For me, today is all about the fact that the water came back on! How wonderful is the sound of running water! How simple is the pleasure in hearing the quiet hum of a washing machine (we were running out of clothes – and Emma de R, it turns out it was lucky that I packed so much! The smell of that washing, once I got the frontloading machine open and found it had been sitting in its own dirty water for 48 hours was not pleasant! And the joy of a flushing toilet, with three little kids in the house…..is unspeakable!
But to the tourist agenda. After breakfast, we drove to Montepulciano, again, only 30 minutes from here. The weather was starting to close in, and it was clearly going to be a rainy day! We stopped first at San Biagio, on the outskirts of Montepulciano – it is a beautiful church, and I remember reading a book that said its architect was just a young man, who planned to put four spires around the church, but his Mamma told him to "go slow, son – one campanile is enough!" It was lovely, and the boys enjoyed the green
fields around it as they “circumnavigated” the exterior of the church!
Up the steep hill to town – whilst Steven and I have previously walked it, this time, from San Biagio, we found a back street which enabled us to park quite close to the top of town – a much better way with 3 kids in the rain! We wandered into the Duomo – very plain, compared to the exteriors of Siena and Florence, but it had some lovely art in it, and then through the streets (when we stopped at a café, Georgia and I ordered hot chocolates, without realizing that they were E5 each, instead of a coffee or a Fanta for E2!) There wasn't a chance to sample the famous wine here at the town, but we've been doing our best by buying local wines at the supermarkets etc! And we discovered that Montepulciano is currently “famous” as the location for the new Twilight movie – Edward paraphernalia everywhere!
Home in the rain – the Tuscan countryside is outstanding, even with the grey clouds. We were meeting the landlord of our apartment and this had been playing on our minds this morning. We were running out of clothes,
as I had put everything that we'd worn in Florence straight into the washing machine, which stayed sealed shut and full of yucky water when the water turned off!
The landlord was a nice American, very apologetic about the lack of water, and tried all sorts of Gerry-rigged alternatives (filling our water tank with a hose from the garden downstairs!) He also sorted out the internet – he got a technician in, who (in Italian) asked him why he thought he could move the internet satellite dish from another house to here – I don't think our landlord knew how much Italian Steven speaks, because this wasn't how he translated the problem to us! And he went to see the hotel down the road to confirm that we were to be swimming without any “towel charge” or the like. It took most of the afternoon to achieve this trifecta, but finally he left – and minutes later, the council turned the water on again, so we didn't have to experiment with the hose and tank method.
All is good again!
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