On the evening before we made a plan to first drive through the Chianti region, South of our hotel, and visit couple of smaller villages or towns, to get the feeling for the area, and we deliberately didn't choose the most touristy spots.
The ride alone was already exciting, several times we had to navigate very narrow streets through the villages. But luckily the traffic was very light, there were almost no tourists and not even many locals on the roads.
The narrow stone paved streets and pretty old houses were adorned with lots of flowers.
Surprisingly was the church outside of the village a bit down on the hill...
...and in front of it was the carpet of small daisies.
Our next stop was the village of Castellina in Chianti. It is a pretty town, not as spectacular as many others, but we had a nice walk through it. There were plenty of old houses, churches...
...and palaces to be seen.
Then we drove to Monteriggioni, another walled town on the top of the hill with very high defence walls. This was the only town mentioned in tourist guides of the ones we visited this day, and as such it was more crowded and the only one where we had to pay for parking.
But it looked very pretty...
...and there was lots to see, like this old fountain.
From the outside it looked really impenetrable.
While driving to our next stop I had to make a photo of this very typical Tuscan scenery.
On the edge of the forrest we saw this Stinking hellebore (smrdljivi teloh or Helleborus foetidus) and we had to make a stop for the photo.
Our next stop was village of Panzano, I wanted to see the butcher shop or Macelleria Cecchini, that I saw long ago on one of the Jamie Oliver's cooking show. The shop was full of delicious looking things, but we didn't buy anything, we weren't returning home for couple of days yet and it would be difficult to store anything fresh till then. When reading about macelleria I found out they also serve lunches and dinners, but here is the catch: the lunch starts at 12, which is way too early after our big breakfast, and dinner starts at 7 in the evening, which is too late for us to have a big dinner with lots of meat. We usually eat late breakfast and then lunch/dinner combined in late afternoon. And this does absolutely not fit with Italian eating schedule, they eat lunch from 12 -15 and dinner from 7 or even 7.30 in the evening to 10. And in between it is very difficult to find any decent food, especially in rural area.
Our first stop was a small walled town of San Donato. It of course sits on the top of the hill.
But apart from few locals it was almost empty.
While we walked back to our car we noticed that Panzano also has an old centre and decided to take a look. It was up on the hill, of course and the surrounding were very pretty.
Along the way between the old houses we found this pretty and very vocal orange cat.
On top of the hill there was a church...
...guarded by another cat.
Right next to the church there was a small bistro and we were getting a bit tired so we decided to have at least a drink there. Then we saw that they also serve snacks throughout the day, so we ordered a big platter of charcuterie with some pickled vegetables and fresh bread and a glass of Chianti wine each and it was very tasty. And we even managed some desserts after that, Tomaz had a chocolate cake of course, and I had some cantuccini with vinsanto.
The bistro also had a terrace, but we were sitting inside in the closed part, as the weather was quite cold.
Then we were ready for next adventures. We planned to stop in Radda in Chianti, another pretty old town on the top of the hill, but as we were driving towards it we saw that the surrounding streets were full of people and parked cars and there was no parking to be found. So we decided to pass and drive on. Later we read that there was a running event there and that's why it was so crowded.
So we drove to Montefioralle, only to find that there were tons of people and cars there as well. They were having a Frittelle festival, where they were all, the whole village, frying fritters and selling them for charity. At least we could find the parking and then strolled through the town. But we were too full to eat any fritters.
The town is very pretty...
...I particularly liked this red door.
Then we drove back to the hotel, we were a bit tired and cold and we went to bed early.
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment