wines and towers

Thurs-Fri

This seems like trouble.

We had a bit more winery visits planned but some of the planning just didn't gel at the last minute; however, we did manage to make it to San Sano which is...somewhere in Tuscany, I can't really tell you--I was just far too nauseous at this point to pay much attention to where we were driving.  I'm telling ya, the carsickness on those hills... not something they warn you about in the guidebooks. If you ever go, start mainlining Dramamine would be my advice. But we made it to San Sano with the boys in tow. Have you ever tried to entertain two children under the age of 4 in a vault of huge wine casks for over two hours? It's a hoot, let me tell ya. I had visions of them knocking the casks off ruining entire vintages. I don't think that was out of the realm of possiblility, to be honest.

Rowan, still plotting

Then after the slowest lunch in Tuscan history (bad waiter, I won't go into it), we made our way over to CasaLoste which is another winery, though on a bit of a smaller scale than San Sano.  There we were met by Emilia who is the wife/brains of the operation and she very graciously took over an hour out of her busy schedule and walked us around the property and cellars and workspaces--it was really cool to see the behind-the-scenes on a mom &pop winery, but don't let the "mom&pop" part fool you--they make some seriously yummy juice. You can buy it here in Austin at East End Wines (of course), but it's not all over, you won't find it the grocery store. But I'm telling you, if you can get your hands on some Inversus, it is dee-licious stuff.

In Dario's shop:  Hopper was under the impression that big bowl of white stuff was gelato. It was lard.

Then we made our way literally just up the hill back to Panzano to go see Dario the Butcher again. He was still wearing the crazy pants.

Friday we drove over to Pisa and got incredibly lost trying to find the Tower. You'd think it's big enough to see from virtually anywhere in the city. It is not. So we wandered around and finally found it after an hour or so (yeah, Lonely Planet maps.. so, SO useless). it did not disappoint.   I know you want to know whether I got my Cheeseball Holding Up the Tower Picture and yes, I did. Though I will say that I was a little better at lining up the shot than Sam was, probably because Sam is over a foot taller than me and I was way less embarrassed about doing it than he was. Seriously yall, EVERYONE in the damned square was taking this same exact picture. Some folks were using tripods, even. I felt no shame. 

 

 

 Thus ends my too brief recap of Shmitally. We really had such an interesting time--had so many great meals, saw so many beautiful things. I wish the boys were a little older so they would remember it more, but I know we'll take another adventure trip with them again...maybe a couple years after the jet lag wears off. Til then, we'll always have Gelato.