Day 30 June 21, 2023 (Montepulciano)
Happy first day of summer!!!!! Today was an easy day after I imbibed a little too much with the wine last night. I woke up at 3 a.m. and never went back to sleep. We took it easy this morning and it gave me time to work on the blog. Our internet is not the best here, it is slow, so that has been holding me up with posting. John was also trying to figure out the next leg of our journey, to Sorrento, as there is not a direct train, and it was taking some time. We had originally planned to drive around the countryside, but decided against it as we were afraid of losing our parking spot. Since only residents can park in the town, guests are limited, and we didn’t want to lose ours. We walked for a bit, popped into a couple of shops, and then went to eat lunch. We chose the first place we ate at when we arrived here (the panini shop) as we knew they had salads, which we both got and then got a side order of lasagna to share. We knew we wanted to eat in tonight so John headed to the store to get supplies and I took a little cat nap, lol!
It has been quite warm here and this is the only place we’ve booked so far that has not had A/C. We are up on the second floor and with the windows open you get a decent breeze, but today was warmer than normal and so it was the same in the room. We’ve noticed since we have been in Italy, that there have been no ceiling fans in any of the places we’ve stayed. Seems strange as we have them in every room of our house.
We went out for an afternoon gelato, perused a few more shops and just walked around looking at the scenery. Montepulciano is basically a big circle with little side streets in between. It does not take long to walk, but each time you do, you see something you didn’t see before. It’s a lovely town! There is a great ceramic shop called Manu Factum 1868 that is run by Marco and his wife. He makes everything by hand as well as hand paints them. We spent quite some time in his shop, found about a piece we liked then left and thought about it. Had a happy hour glass of wine, went back to the store, bought the piece and it will be shipped to us mid-July. I’m happy to have a piece of beautiful Montepulciano in my home!
John cooked salmon and green beans and we reheated leftover risotto for dinner. We are a little burned out with eating out so much, so it was nice to eat in for a change. While I cleaned up, John went back out and got us desert – a berry tart, orange marmalade heart tart and meringue cookie. All were delicious! Lights out early, we head to Sorrento in the morning and it will be a long travel day, not expected to get in until around 5 p.m.
Miles walked – I only did 3, John did closer to 5 (oh well, we will make up for it another day!) Ciao!
