First full day in Italy

Though honestly, yesterday was a pretty full day. Plane, train, bus, and finally car.

Surprisingly, I made it through the day yesterday, only dozing off briefly at seemingly random moments, much to the amusement of my family. Made it all the way until 11:00 PM. So almost exactly 24 hours after leaving Philadelphia and 36 hours after waking up in Bala Cynwyd, I went to bed in Castellina in Chianti.

Incredibly, I slept for 10 1/2 hours. I genuinely cannot remember the last time I slept for anything like that. A normal night is 6 and I rarely go beyond 7. So we shall see how this plays out over the course of another day.

Today we had a tour, which Ronnie arranged that sounded promising, as it included food and wine and olive oil and cool towns. Our guid was Elana, a talkative young woman (is that the basic tour guide job description, extremely talkative at all times?) First stop on today's tour was Poderino, farm in San Quirico d'Orcia, a Unesco heritage site where we tasted wine and olive oil. Spectacularly beautiful and delicious. Very tasty olive oil.

The guy who ran the place was very pleasant and upbeat and chatted away to us as if we could understand anything he said, which we couldn't. All we had was two pieces of toast, one just soaked in olive oil and one with tomatoes and salt and olive oil. And a glass of their wine. Yummy.

From there we headed to Pienza, the home of Pope Pius II. Wonderful aromas in the cheese shops and panoramic views from the top of the wall. Pienza falls into the broad category of hill towns, which pretty much means what it says. They're towns of various sites, perched on top of hills so that they could see their enemies coming from a long distance and assume good defensive positions. The problem with these towns is that in a lot of ways, living on top of a big hip is a pain in the butt. You have to go down somewhere to get everything. Water supply is usually limited to cisterns and you can't grow much of anything. Plus, they're hilly. Even walking on the street can be difficult, though Pienza was very tame in that regard.

Then to lunch, where I finally remembered to take pictures of food. This place is an organic farm that serves only things it grows itself.

It was a very cool place, and the lady who runs it was incredible. Yackety yackety yack, effortlessly dispensing wisdom about how to make the best natural cheeses and the benefits to people of breathing fresh air and eating fresh foods. It was like talking to your mom on speed if your mom were an artisinal cheese maker, which mine was not.

I'll finish this tomorrow.