We woke up on Friday morning to discover the fog had followed us to Siena.
Even though we’d spend two week all over Northern Italy, we hadn’t ventured into the area right around our villa, so we decided to decided to explore.
Apparently there’s a law in this area that the government can reclaim private land that isn’t being used, so people plant things just to hold on to their property. In the case of the property our villa is on, it’s olive and walnut trees.
After an aborted river crossing while trying to get to the supermarket, we decided to get lunch at the local deli, which is the oldest salumeria still curing their own meat in Tuscany. I’m already planning my apprenticeship.
It was pretty easy to decide what to order.
It was so good I even forgave the Comic Sans on the label for the house wine.
After that it was time to head back to Avis(!) to exchange our Volvo for a smaller car. This is officially our most-visited location in Italy.
We returned with a very practical (but according to Polly very boring) Ford Fiesta manual. Driving a little manual hatchback in Tuscany feels like the real Italian motoring experience.
The next day, after learning the that the salumeria opened at 7:30 am for coffee, I decided to risk the hundred- meter walk along the footpath-free road. The first fifty meters wasn’t so bad.
The second fifty gets a bit more interesting.
The next couple of days we ran errands, explored Siena and discovered that our oven has a perfect ‘Pizza’ setting.
On New Year’s Eve morning we decided to go to the nearest thermal springs, about half and hour drive away. It was about 2 degrees outside but the water is about 40.
We got home to discover our first Amazon Prime order had been delivered. Turns out Amazon is amazing when living in a small town in a foreign country.
That night we had decided to have a late (for us, early for Italians) dinner at a Chinese restaurant in town and then join the festivities for New Years Eve.
The restaurant was surprisingly good with a menu clearly designed by an engineer.
After dinner, we wandered around the city, listened to music and tried to work out why the military was out in force (turns out there had been problems with people bringing their own fireworks into the piazza last year).
We were all getting tired and the music was too loud for Audrey so we headed home at about 11, put this kids to bed and Mandi and I watched the fireworks over the city from our bedroom.