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Published: November 4th 2009
Wow it's been awhile. We've been biking almost every day since Florence in some pretty remote parts of Tuscany so it's been hard to find time to write.
Biking through Tuscany has been an interesting experience. On one hand the food is amazing and everywhere you look there's olive trees and fields of vineyards turning yellow and orange. But on the other hand those "rolling hills of Tuscany" are not quite what I pictured. They're actually more like little mountains with roads that run straight up and straight down them. We found this out the hard way on our first bike trip from Florence. After finding a fill-your-own bottle wine shop we began to plan the next few days over too many glasses of cheap wine. Some point in time, somehow, we decided that we should abandon our plans to bike through the Chianti region to Siena (the route was already outlined in my cycling book too!) and bike to...Volterra. You may be asking yourself what Volterra is, or maybe what's there. The answer is nothing really. But at the time it seemed like such a great idea. So the next morning we set off for Volterra and discovered why you should never plan over wine. Biking that day was harder than biking through the mountains. The hills were so steep I thought I might fall off my bike and tumble down them. Finally we get to a sign that Volterra is only 10 km away only to discover that those 10 km are straight up yet another hill. Later we realized the guidebook plainly says Volterra is perched high on hill but we somehow missed that part. Also, strangely enough we discovered the next day that the Twilight movie was actually filmed in Volterra. It's like we can't escape-first Forks now Italy. Luckily I still happened to have my vampire teeth in my purse and we took more vampire pictures.
From Volterra we biked to Siena and a bunch of other old little towns that all seem to be at the top of huge hills. We reached the ocean in Orbetello a few days ago. Since it was Sunday and absolutely everything is closed on Sunday we biked into town with small hopes of finding some restaurant open. We lucked out and just happened to be there the last night of a Tuscan food and wine expo. We drank tons of wine samples-pretty awesome!
Right now I'm back in Tuscany. We're staying on a farm here and picking olives in exchange for a place to stay and food in a small town called Chianni. It's raining today though so we took the train back to Pisa for the day. I'm excited to learn how to make olive oil and it's nice eating real home-cooked Tuscan food, except when it's kind of weird. Last night the old lady we're staying with made risotto, which was so good. But then she comes in with a dish of meat and says it's "veal bits". Not exactly sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure it was liver and heart. It was so gross but there was nothing to do but eat it and pretend to like it. mmm...love those veal bits.
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Mom
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Funny girl!
Seriously, you crack me up every time a read a new post! Did I NOT warn you about Volterra? Did you see Aro? Hope you told him hello from me! Be careful of that vampire. . he may seem harmless but almost killed Bella and Edward's little girl! Oh hope I didn't ruin the book for you! Just can not get over the fact you are biking all over Italy! Surely you must have learned drinking and making bad decisions seems to always go together. Have you not seen the Ebay items I have received as a result? Although the plans for Hawaii was a good decision as a result of drinking wine. Trying to imagine you eating veal bits but think I just threw up a little in my mouth! The risotto sounds really good though. Too bad they didn't have a dog you could have given the meat to! Aunt Bevie said you could come stay at their farm, would not have to work and would supply free wine! But then again, it would not be Italy, although she would probably take you to Olive Garden as a treat. You are going to be so spoiled when you get home and have to eat regular food. Good luck with the olive picking and keep us updated. We are all living vicariously through your life you know! Love to you both!