leaving San Gimignano

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Saturday, Oct 8 Leaving San Gimignano
Today was our day to leave Poggiacolle. We spent quite a bit of time visiting with Stefano this morning. He is such a super guy. We have to return to his farm to see how it changes over the years. He has many plans. From there we went briefly into San Gimignano to get some souvenirs that we wanted. Then it was off to Montalcino.
We arrived in Montalcino at around 2 pm. It gave us 2 hours to wander the small town before we had to leave to meet our host at the next Agroturismo. Montalcino is a pretty standard old Tuscan city, like many of the others. It is famous for Brunello wines – the reason for us stopping. We picked out a trio of wines – a Brunello as well as a Rosso and a house wine from a particular vineyard and then headed for our new home for 4 nights.
Our next accommodation is an Agroturismo called Poggia Antica that is on Lake Chiusi near the very small town of Porto. It is just on the border between Tuscany and Umbria. We are only paying $50 euros a night. It is not as well equipped as the last place but our studio apartment is huge with vaulted brick ceilings and a large kitchen (just not as much equipment in it). Out our front door, there is a little sitting area with a view to the little lake. There is just and one other couple here tonight. After arriving, we went into a town about 10 minutes away to get the ingredients for supper. While we were eating, supper we could hear a cat meowing so after dinner we went outside and a very friendly cat came right away and purred like crazy when we petted it. Claude brought out some of our left over fat spaghetti and the cat just wolfed it down. We brought out some more and another much more timid cat arrived. We chuckled that we were sitting outside after dark feeding stray cats spaghetti in Italy.

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