The Best Meal I've Ever Had!

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Hillary and I decided to take one last trip together before I moved back to the States. She had never been to Florence, which is pretty amazing considering how much she loves Italy, so we decided to make Florence our final trip. We decided not to spend the entire trip just in Florence and I had heard a lot of great stuff about Siena so we decided on a night there first. We flew into Pisa in the morning on the 17th and took the train directly to Siena. We had booked a room at Agriturismo Marciano which, of course, had fabulous ratings on TripAdvisor, and we certainly weren't disappointed! We found a taxi that knew where it was located (it's a little outside of Siena's city walls) and headed there. It's in a gorgeous location surrounded by perfect countryside and I immediately wished that we had booked more time there. It was €85 for one night for a double room so it was our big splurge for the trip. There were exposed beams in the ceiling and a beautiful view out of the window. The great thing about agriturismos is that they're B&Bs that grow their own food, so the meals are fantastic. Breakfast was included but for an extra charge we could get a full dinner, grown there and cooked there. Like I said, this was our splurge 😊

We signed up for dinner and then the girl working there gave us a ride into town where we ate lunch and walked around. Siena is a walled city and very few cars are allowed inside the walls. We visited the Piazza del Campo, the town center, where they have horse races twice a year. It's a large town center when there are only people there but I can't imagine horses racing around it!

After walking around we found a taxi to take us back to the B&B and shared it for part of the time with a really nice businessman with great English who had the taxi driver take us past some sights on his way to his business meeting. Italians are so friendly!

Dinner starts late in Italy and goes for several hours so we took a little nap beforehand and I'm glad we did. Our flight had left Frankfurt at 8am which meant I had been up since about 4am getting everything together and catching the bus. About 7pm we met downstairs in the common area and the owner took us out to the wine casks and explained winemaking to us. His English was decent but there was a Belgian couple there and the husband's English was perfect so he would further explain things to us. The conversation continued on through dinner...both the husband and wife spoke great English and their son understood quite a bit from school but was too embarrassed to speak. That changed when I mispronounced a French word trying to communicate with him and it came out sounding like a dirty word in French! The parents were amused and the son loosened up a little bit 😊

So, let me tell you about dinner. I can't even remember everything we ate but it was mostly vegetables with light sauces and seasoning. There was only one pasta dish and one meat dish...and every course had a different wine from their own wine barrels. The most memorable one was the cheese wine. They served us some sort of cheese with a green tomato jelly on it and a wine to go with it and it was at that moment that I understood matching wine with food. I still don't know how to do it, but I understand now how much better everything tastes when the wine and food complement each other.

After dinner we stayed up talking with the Belgian couple until it got really late. We were all leaving in the morning so we finally said goodnight and all went to our rooms. What a great end to a great day!

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