For the third day in a row the alarm interrupted our sleep at 6:45 AM. I got up first, see a pattern here, to shower and get dressed. Then I woke up Stephanie so she could follow suite.
As usual, we ate breakfast in the apartment before heading out, and once more it was a banana, and this time, Vanilla yogurt. It is a good and quick breakfast, and we don’t have to worry about finding something after we get on the road.
We left promptly at 8:30 AM. Today’s initial destination was the town of Montepulciano, about an hour’s drive away. The first part of the drive, about 30 km, was on one of the main highways. We then exited onto a smaller road that was initially pretty easy to drive, straight and not hilly, but it soon turned into a narrow and winding road. Parts of the road were a manageable 60 kph speed limit, other parts were a faster, and not really possible 90 kph. By the way, kph is kilometers per hour, just as a reminder. The drive took us through some small towns along the way, which were nice to see. Of course, there are vineyards and olive groves everywhere. Unfortunately, there were not many places to stop for photos on the narrow roads.
We arrived at Montepulciano about 9:20 AM, we had Google Map directions to parking lot P1, which was at the lower end of the town, and was the suggested lot to park in from my research. Since it was early, parking was not an issue, and there were plenty of the tiny spaces available. Figuring out the parking payment system was an issue. This was a surface lot with no entry/exit gates, and parking was prepaid, and you are required to display the prepaid ticket with the selected departure time printed on it on the dash. There was one ticket machine in the lot to use for payment.
Of course, all of the ticket machine instructions were in Italian, go figure. I finally put in my credit card and selected the plus button, which added time and fare in fifteen minute increments. I put in 3 hours of total time for Euro 4.60, thinking we should be able to see everything in that amount of time, and the machine printed us a ticket. We placed the printed ticket on the dash for viewing by the parking attendants, and got all of our gear out of the car. There was an Information Building in the lot, so we headed over there for a map. There was an older woman in the shop, and a younger teenage boy. She picked up a map and handed it to him to give us instructions. We thought maybe she did not speak English, but that was not the case, the boy was in “training”, it was his first day. He was not doing well, so she took over after just a couple of minutes. We thanked them and got ready to leave but the lady said the map was Euro 0.50, we did not know there was a charge. We paid and thanked them for their assistance, and we headed out to go into the city.
It was about a 1.5 km walk up a gradual hill to the main Piazza in town, at the other end of the town from where we started. It was early, so the crowds were small, and it was an enjoyable walk. Many of the stores were not yet open, and there was a significant number of vehicles going up the main street of the town, Via Voltnel Corso. It was a little annoying, we had to get over to the side several time to let the vehicles pass on the narrow street. This was a limited traffic zone, but not as limited or pedestrian friendly as some towns. It might have been busier because it was early morning, and several of the vehicles were delivery trucks taking their items to the stores and restaurants.
We were headed to the main Piazza, Piazza Grande, but first stopped at the Church of Sant’ Agostina to look inside and take some photos. We started our uphill walk once more, and after a while, saw some steps that went uphill to the right, but thought the sign said to go straight to the Piazza. As it ended up, we were supposed to take those steps to get to Piazza Grande, but we took the longer route around.
We finally arrived at Piazza Grande, and there were only a few people there. We had only seen two tour groups so far, and it was either because we were early, or it was Monday, or both. It was nice to be in a town that was not so crowded like we had experienced yesterday on a Sunday.
The town hall, Palazzo Comunale, had both a bell tower and a lower observation level that you could pay Euro 5.00 a person to climb up. It was not that tall, so we decided to give it a try with our still weary legs. We purchased our tickets and had to check our backpacks with the attendant, we were not sure why until later. There was an elevator, so we took it up to the first floor thinking that was the level of the lower observation deck. It was not, only a office floor level, the building was still in use as the City Hall. We went up a set of stairs, and then saw the entrance to the bell tower and observation deck. The steps up to the bell tower were really narrow, and steep. It would have been really difficult to climb up with backpacks Now we understood why they required them to be checked.
We passed by the first observation deck level and opted to go all the way to the top of the tower first. It was really steep, but not than many steps. Once at the top, we had fantastic views of the surrounding countryside and the two ends of the city, which is long and narrow. We descended, thinking it would be even harder than the ascent, but it looked worse than it was. We went out onto the lower observation level, but there was not really anything to see there compared to the view we had from the top of the tower. We headed all the way down, and retrieved our backpacks, then headed outside. We needed to use the Toilette, and there was a free one outside on the right of the city hall building.
We next visited the main church on Palazzo Grande, the Duomo di Montepulciano. It was nice inside, but not that grand, but fitting for this town. We took a few photos and then exited. We headed down a side street to go to a couple of other churches along the way as we headed back to the bottom of the town.
We stopped where we saw a scenic overlook through an opening to a small open patio area. It was the Music Center, and we could hear several people practicing for an upcoming concert on October 3. There was also someone singing, and it was nice to listen to for a while. We took some photos from the overlook, along with a selfie, but it was too shaded there for the selfie to come out well, the background was so much brighter than our faces that were shaded.
We headed down the side street once again, heading to two other churches on the way, the first being the Church of San Francisco. There was a great overlook in the piazza outside the church, so we took some more photos and better selfies out in the direct sunshine. We saw some people exit the church, but by the time we finished the photos, the door was locked. We were not sure why, but we were not going to get inside.
There was yet another church lower down on the same road, Santa Lucia, and it looked really old from the outside. It was fairly small, and the inside was pretty plain, but still nice.
From there, we took a side street back over to the main street in the town, Via Voltnel Corso. Since more of the shops were open now, we headed back uphill to check some of them out, specifically looking for a copper shop we had passed on the way up this morning, but had not gone into because it was not yet open. Although the street was not steep, it was uphill and the copper shop was farther uphill than we thought. We finally made it there and went inside, it was very pretty, there was polished copper everywhere.
We left that shop and stopped at a ceramic shop we had passed just a few minutes earlier. We went inside and saw a really pretty ceramic wine carafe that we purchased as a reminder of our time here in Montepulciano.
It was about noon, so we headed back down to the lower end of town. While walking back to the parking lot, we tried to find somewhere to get a quick bite for lunch, but nothing had “to go” menus and we needed to get to the car before 12:30 PM, the end time of our prepaid parking ticket. We wished we had added just one more hour to our parking time so we could get some lunch before we left. It was a fairly long walk from the end of town into the parking lot, downhill back, but uphill if we wanted to return to the city, so when we arrived at the lot, we decided not to add time to the parking ticket. There were some shops and eateries near the parking lot, but none of them had sandwiches to go either.
We just got in the car and decided we would just get lunch in the next town we were heading to, Pienza, about 25 minutes away. First however, we wanted to stop at a nice church just below Montepulciano called San Biagio. We had seen it from the scenic overlooks earlier this morning. We put the church name into Google Maps, and followed the driving directions there, and parked along the street. It was nice looking from the outside, but we opted not to pay the fee to go inside and look around. We were hungry and wanted to get to Pienza and have some lunch.
We got back into the car and used Google Maps to guide us to Pienza. Once we got to the town, we had a really hard time with finding somewhere to park. There were only a few small lots, and it was either timed parking with a clock display, or permitted, or prepay for display on the dash. However, we could not find a space anywhere, the lots were really small, and already full. We drove around in a circle about four times looking for parking, pulling into one lot about three times. We were not the only ones looking for parking, so that made it even worse, and we were hungry. After about twenty minutes of parking lot frustration, we decided to blow off Pienza, it was just too hard to find parking.
There was a small Coop grocery by one of the parking lots, so we went inside to get some supplies for dinner, and maybe find a sandwich for lunch at the deli, if there was one. There was no deli, or sandwiches. We had decided earlier that we would just get some Pici Pasta, past sauce and bread and cook in tonight so we could relax this afternoon at Agriturismo Montaperti, and not have to drive to dinner. This was especially true now since we were not going to park to visit Pienza, and would get back even earlier to the agriturismo.
The Coop was basically out of any pasta sauces, the few they had were really small and did not look good, but we did buy the Pici Pasta, bread, and some red wine. We figured we would find or search for another grocery store on the way back to Montaperti. We tried to find a couple of different stores using Google Maps, but they were too far away from our route home. We just happened to see a large Lidl as we were driving through a small town on the way back. We stopped to pick up the rest of our dinner supplies, and to get something for lunches.
At the Lidl, we initially picked out three croissants for making lunch sandwiches later at home, but then saw that they had Focaccia Bread, so we also got two pieces of that for the lunch sandwiches, and decided to keep the croissants for breakfast tomorrow.
We picked up some prosciutto ham, speck, and some provolone cheese for the sandwiches, plus potato chips, which are really cheap in Italy. A large bag of chips was only Euro 0.89. They had a good selection of tomato based sauces for the pasta for tonight, so we picked up one jar along with another bottle of red wine. We also got some black olives and picked up a small package of napkins.
It was about a 25 minute drive back to the agriturismo from the Lidl, and once there, we made our sandwiches. It was almost 3:00 PM, and we were really hungry. This was the first day we had an issue with getting something to eat for lunch, the paid parking expiring in Montepulciano set us back, and then not finding a parking space in Pienza made the lunch situation even worse.
After eating lunch, we just relaxed and wondered around in the vineyard and olive grove. There was one remaining bunch of red grapes at the end of a row that had not gotten picked by the machine, so we were able to get another taste of the grapes, which were really good and sweet.
The owners were actually picking some of the grapes that they apparently could not get to with the automated machine when they had harvested the majority of grapes sometime before we arrived. We saw them using their tractor to bring back boxes of grapes, and the two youngest daughters were riding on the back of the small trailer with the grapes.
There were also several olive trees on the property, some with really large, but not yet ripe olives, and some with smaller green olives, also not yet ripe. We surmised that the larger ones may be black olives, but there was not really a way for us to know for sure.
We decided to go ahead and fold the clothes we had washed a couple of days ago, they were still on the drying rack, and we had put the rack back out in the sunshine to freshen up the clothes. We wanted to get our bags packed since we are leaving here early tomorrow. Fortunately, the suitcases don’t need to be precisely packed since we will still be travelling in the car, and will have a lot of things out of the suitcases for our day tomorrow in Assisi. We did put all of our long sleeve items and cooler weather clothes on the bottom of the suitcases, we do not anticipate that it will be anything but warmer weather as we head farther south for the remainder of the trip.
With the packing completed, we enjoyed a bottle of wine outside in the “Wi-Fi area”. It was so pleasant with the breeze, but there were a few mosquitos. We lit the citronella candle that had been left on the table, we had finally remembered to get a lighter while we were in Montepulciano earlier today just for that purpose.
It was getting late, about 7:45 PM, and we needed to get a start on our pasta dinner. It was nice knowing we did not need to get in the car and drive to dinner after having the wine this evening, DUI laws here are extremely strict.
We started a pot of boiling water on the gas stove, and also started heating our tomato sauce in a small pan. The Pici pasta instructions on the bag called for 20 minutes of cooking time in the boiling waster, and then additional time cooking in the sauce. We were not going to cook the pasta in the sauce, so we knew it would take more cooking time in the boiling water. It took a total of 30 minutes before we thought it was cooked perfectly.
We had grated some leftover cheese to put on top of the pasta, and also cut up some of our black olives. We also sliced up the small loaf of bread we had purchased. The dinner was really tasty, and we had a Montepulciano Nobile Wine with it. It was as good a meal as we had at any restaurant, we really liked the Pici Pasta.
We cleaned up the dishes and relaxed a bit before Stephanie turned in for the night and I finished the post for today. We set an alarm for 6:15 AM tomorrow morning, we want to be on the road by 7:30 AM for the drive to Assisi.
By 10:30 PM, I was tired and headed to bed. We had really enjoyed the relaxing afternoon, and our stay at the Agriturismo Montaperti.