We ended up making it out of Florence pretty easy and we arrived in Greve in Chianti by bus. The ride took a little under an hour so it wasn't too bad. Upon our arrival at the bus station, we call the woman from our hotel to come pick us up. About 10 minutes later she arrives in this total piece of a car that is worse than Brenda's Posh (I know, really hard to imagine). I open the door to the back seat and I thought it was going to break off in my hand. We smash Brenda and the two backpacks in the back seat and I take shotgun. We're driving through town and she's point stuff out to us and then we start to make our journey to the hotel...by dirt road. We pull up to the hotel which is really more like a bed & breakfast and she shows us around and to our room...or should I say villa in a restored barn that sits up on a hill and overlooks the countryside (cue sappy music and roll the credits for the movie Under the Tuscan Sun). It is everything I had anticipated but for some reason I am still in shock that this is actually where we will be staying for the next 3 nights...in the rustic woods with no TV and hardly any cell phone service. I felt like I was in that Sex and the City episode when Aiden takes Carrie out to the cabin and Carrie ventures out into the woods to find service and calls Miranda to come save her. We're going to go out of our freakin minds!
We venture out into the little town of Greve and walk through everything in about 20 minutes. We stop for lunch and then seek out the infamous wine celler that we read about. This cellar has over 300 wines and olive oils that you can taste and sample. Clearly we spent a good amount of time in this place! You purchase a card for $10-$15-$20 euro and the wines are all set up in stations with automatic pourers. When you find a wine you want to try, you put your card in the machine in the station, put your glass under the the little spout and press a button and wham bam your glass is poured. It's a pretty badass concept, but you don't always know what you're tasting and having somewhere there telling you what your drinking is always a plus. We got a pretty good buzz going then we decided to make the walk back to our hotel to hang out and book a wine tour for the next day.
We wake up in the AM and hang out and read (there's really nothing else to do!) then we start our trek to a nearby winery for a tasting and a tour. We're walking to this place and all we see is this gigantic place on a hill and it's about a million miles away...we gulp...hmm wonder if we can hitch a ride with the next person that passes us (where is Carmel the bread guy when you need him most?!) we end up turning around this bend and the winery is actually right there and not up the gigantic hill (thank god!). We end up doing a private tour and tasting with a guy that works at the vineyard. It was really cool, he took us all over and in the cellars and showed us the bottling machines...i took a few pics but will have to post them later.
After the tour we head back to the hotel to get ready for a restaurant opening in town. Oh yes, a restaurant opening...the woman that picked us up at the hotel invited us. She said something like the people that own the hotel are opening the restaurant and we are invited because we are guests at the hotel...really good Italian food, wine and musical entertainment for free...where do I sign up?! We show up to this thing and there are a million Italians and well, us. We kinda hung back and sat on a bench while drinking wine and tasting all sorts of foods that they kept bringing out plate by plate and bowl by bowl. We're watching all of these people arrive and everyone is bringing plants with them as gifts. One guy showed up with a plant resembling some kind of mini palm tree...clearly a custom that we knew nothing about. The food was amazing...except for this one dish that I thought was pasta but it ended up being some type of cold white fish or octopus and it was super creepy. I put it in my mouth, look at Brenda and am like oh, dear god, what the hell did I just eat?! There was some live music with a 100% tone-deaf Italian woman singing (sooo bad) and people were dancing and hanging out...it was such a perfect setting...and a perfect time for someone to get wacked (that didn't happen though). We called it a night then headed back to the hotel so we could get a good sleep for the wine festival the next day!
The wine festival was AWESOME! Picture Atlantic City Beer Fest, but classy and a melting pot of people with accents. We got our wine glass, wine glass pouch and card for all the booths and went to town tasting all sorts of wines from the region. I am a big fan of Sangiovese grapes from the region and was tasting all sorts of great local wines. I didn't buy anything at the festival, but did buy two bottles for the trip home...I am hoping that the Wine Hugs I purchased at QVC to protect the wine bottles when traveling do their job! We will see once my bag arrives in Philadelphia...either soaked in red wine or dry as a bone!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment