Weekend in Tuscany--Part 1: Night 1 and Pienza

Some people from Robbie's work organized a weekend trip for the group to stay in the Tuscany region for two nights, have some great Tuscan food, fancy, expensive wine, and do some sightseeing.  We drove to a hotel outside of Siena on Friday after Robbie got home from work.  Tuscany is absolutely beautiful with its rolling hills, vineyards, and little towns.  There were nearly 80 people in our group, so we, along with three other families ended up being at a separate little hotel a few miles away.


View from our hotel

After getting settled in a bit, we headed to the other hotel for dinner.  Right in front of the hotel was a beautiful vineyard. They were harvesting the grapes that day--the next morning when we got there all the grapes were gone so we got really lucky to be able to see it as we did and get lots of good pictures.

Once Robbie was done taking tons and tons of pictures, we headed up to the patio with the rest of the group to wait for dinner to start.  This was our first full, 6 course Italian dinner and we were hungry!
First we had a soup, but it wasn't what I think of when I think soup.  There wasn't really a broth, but it was made with some meat, greens, and some kind of grain that was the consistency of polenta (maybe rice?). It was really good--Michael helped me eat mine and once we were finished, helped finish someone else's leftovers too. The second course (or "primi" here in Italy) is the pasta dish.  We had pici (pronounced "peachy") which is a thick spaghetti tomato sauce. 

 Dining room

Michael's pici face

 

After the pici, it was time for secondi, a beef dish with fresh parmesan cheese.  I had never thought about putting fresh parmesan on my steak, but it was so good!  That will probably be one thing we bring back to the US with us (if we can find good, fresh cheese).  The salad was served with this course as well.

 



Also with this meal, we got to try some Brunello wine made in this region.  I know pretty much nothing about wine, but apparently these are very fancy, expensive, "complex" wines.  I feel like it was wasted on us a little bit--it was good, but it didn't taste much different to me than any of the other wines we had on the trip.  Maybe if we go back with more experienced palates towards the end of the trip we'll appreciate it more.

For dessert, we had tiramisu and coffee.  The whole meal took nearly three hours so we had to keep taking turns entertaining Michael outside or on the stairs while the other ate.  As a result, I ended up missing dessert.  By that point I was so full I didn't even care, and tiramisu is more Robbie's thing than mine anyway.  We headed back to our hotel around 11 pm (way past baby bedtime, but he was a trooper and didn't seem to mind), went to bed, and tried to get some rest for sighseeing the next morning.

After breakfast, everyone else got on a bus to head to Pienza (we took our car so we didn't have to worry about car seats, nap times, and carsickness on windy Tuscan roads). I had never heard of Pienza before. It's a cute little town on top of a hill with some beautiful views, pretty churches, and shops.  I was glad we went there, because I doubt we would have found it on our own.

Like Ferrara, there were some walls you could walk on around the city and see all the gorgeous views. There were also some interesting statues.  The church here was smaller than others we've visited, but still pretty and definitely worth seeing.

 

 

We were only in Pienza for about two hours which was really about all we needed in the tiny town.  We sat down and had coffee, talked with others in our group, took some pictures, and then headed back towards Siena for the afternoon.