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DAY NINE
Peter got up early and took some photo‘s, still searching for the award winning sunrise photo. Don’t know how he did it after the walking effort the day before. He then went back to bed awhile, then got up and waited for Robyn to surface, and waited!! Meanwhile Jenny and I woke up and headed into San Gimi to try and find the fruit and veg market, couldn’t find it. Oh well, we might as well shop anyway, a hand bag each and some small things that we really needed and then we were ready for lunch.
Rang Robyn (11.45am) woke her up Jenny said, and organised to meet her and Pete for lunch in San Gimi. Sounds like another typical day of eating, drinking, laughing and people watching. We had a great lunch and sat around in the sunshine watching the hundreds of tourists going by.
Jenny, Peter and Robyn went to the Museum of Torture, but I thought I could give this a miss so I sat at our favourite bar and checked my emails and generally watched the world go by. One experience I could have done without and that was tasting my first
espresso, it is so strong and gritty, don’t think I will become an espresso drinker, but I did have a caffe crème which was wonderful and nearly better than gelato. Did I say that?? No nothing is better than the gelato which I religiously have every day just to make sure I get to try all the flavours.
This is the way to live life. We walk everywhere and are starting to feel like locals as we have been here about seven days and we love it. Bit busy during the day with all those bloody tourists, but we still enjoy it when we come in later and it is quiet and deserted. Peter loves it early in the morning when he is up with the locals and he has his espresso at the bar and there are no talking women around (that’s us I think!!).
After our leisurely lunch and Torture Museum we all head back to the villa for a little R & R before our planned big night out. Well after much discussion the big night out turned out to be a big night in with Robyn making us a wonderful platter with all
the bits and pieces we had in the fridge to help clean it out before we have to move on. So once again we sat around eating and drinking and laughing about our adventures, especially the big walking trip from the day before. Nobody is saying it, but we all blame Jenny for getting us lost, while she is busy blaming the Italian map!! Still it was an adventure to remember and one we will talk about for many years to come.
Went to bed unusually late for me about 10.00pm!!! Pete promised to knock on my door in the morning to wake me up so I could go on the early morning walk in search of the perfect sunrise photo.
DAY TEN - By Sandra
The day dawned early, thanks to Pete at about 5.00am. I struggled to get dressed in the dark and off we went. I am sure he planned it - no sunrise to speak of this morning all grey and overcast and no wonderful photos of San Gimi with the orange morning sun reflecting on the city walls. Still there is still Venice to try and get that wonderful sunrise photo’s. We had
a great walk anyway and I saw San Gimi minus the tourists and actually got to take some photo’s of the laneways, minus the people. Now Peter is going to record his travel blog for the day.
DAY TEN - By Peter
Started as per planned, hatched over vino’s the night before. I arose at 5.00am in time for a stroll into San Gimi to catch the sunrise. The night before Sandra was keen to accompany me so after two wake up taps on her door, two minutes later we were on our way. Jenny says she is never ready for work that quickly!
10 minutes later in the town centre and on an outer perimeter walk way overlooking a valley, our plans are in disarray. For the first time in our stay in Tuscany, cloud cover has meant no sunrise. Not perturbed we took in the view of the mist over the valley and spoke of getting up at the same time in Venice and with or without the sunrise seeing markets open and fishermen returning with their daily catch. Next it was back to the centro of town for an early morning coffee and to buy
croissants for breakfast for the two sleeping beauties back at the villa. As we walked back through drizzling rain we spoke of how lucky we had been with the weather in Tuscany up until now. After breakfast we headed into San Gimi for last minute souvenir shopping. We then decided to have lunch at Il Monte ristorante the place we had reached on our walking misadventure the other day when we had been lucky enough to hail down our taxi driver Roberto.
We had a nice, typically long Italian lunch, the bottle of wine that the waiter produced was not what we ordered. I was relieved when all the girls voted that it didn’t taste like Grange and this was confirmed when we got the bill and it was only 8 Euros. By the way, what goes on holidays, stays on holidays and therefore what Rob did over lunch stays on holidays???!!! (Ask Robyn if you want more details - I will only say that I would have been told off if I had done it) .When we finished lunch it was still raining so we cancelled plans to go back to San Gimi to see the second Torture
Museum. From the prior days museum visit we had got the message about what a sadistic lot they were in times gone by.
Although still raining we ventured out to the restaurant with our favourite waitress for our last dinner in Tuscany. We all agreed it was one of the best dinners we have had accompanied by a 1.5 litre bottle of Chianti, what a way to finish in Tuscany. Jenny and I were not able to get Biscotti Liqueur for lunch (the last liqueur was taken by the bikies on the table next to us, Jenny and I blame Sandra for us missing out as she let the bikies overtake us on the way to the restaurant). So we were happy to finish our meal tonight with biscotti liqueur. When we left the restaurant we were surprised to be surrounded by a pea soup fog after a day of rain. We finished the night back at the villa with vino and making our plans for the next day. As usual the more vino the grander the plans.
I have now taken 570 photo’s, how am I going to condense this into a size 400 photo album
when I still have Cinque Terra, Venice, Paris and Burgundy to go. I am going to have to delete a lot of photo’s of Jenny drinking vino!!
Cinque Terra here we come!!
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Roberto Laureles Cortés
non-member comment
About Italian....
Hi Sand First of all it has been so fun reading ur experiences in such a grat country like Italy. The message is just about the instauration of the democratic rule in 1948, after WWII, as well as a message for Italians not to forget the strict rule of a fascist government.