Montepulciano

We started off our time in Montepulciano. It is such a beautiful town. I just love the narrow windy roads (as seen in pic on left). We definitely got our exercise here. Our rental was below the town square but above the main street with shops so we were up and down the hill a lot. There was one playground at the top of the hill and one playground at the bottom of the hill as well so we went up and down to these playgrounds as well. The girls did a great job walking although I did have to carry Ali quite a bit since it was a lot of work for her little legs. We spent the first full day in Italy exploring Montepulciano. Over the week we spent a lot of time in town. Since we had to be back everyday for Ali's nap we would just spend the afternoon in town every day. It was nice to have the yard at our rental as well since often in the afternoons the girls would run around the grass barefoot and Jason and I would join them sometimes as well. There is nothing like the feel of cool grass on bare feet.

We decided to eat lunch out with the family and we went to a restaurant that was recommended by the owners of our rental. As we walked in to the restaurant the rental owners were there and introduced us to the owner and gave us recommendations for lunch. It really made us feel like part of the community. We all (Me, Jason, Sofia, Ali, Diane and Dan) sat down for lunch. We had a bottle of the house wine and ordered our meals. The food was fantastic. Jason and I both got pici alle briciole which is a pasta with fried bead crumbs. I know, it sounds odd but it was recommended to us by our apartment owners so we decided to try it. It was excellent. Pici is a homemade pasta that is kind of like a gnocci but longer. The pasta was coated in the breadcrumb mixture and olive oil. Diane got the pici with truffles and Dan got the pici with ragu. We gave the kids some of our food. We realized at this point that Sofia has expensive tastes. She loved the pici with truffles! We didn't think she would like that since truffles have a very strong flavor but she loved it. Luckily for us, truffles aren't expensive while in Italy. We ate two lunches at this same restaurant since the food was so good.

Jason's parents were very nice and watched the kids for us on two nights so that we could go out to dinner. The first restaurant we went to was ok. It wasn't bad but it wasn't outstanding either. It was a very quiet restaurant which is so different than any other restaurants we have been in while in Italy. The one thing about the restaurant that was very cool was the wine cellar. I tried to take a picture but I couldn't capture it. The wine cellar was basically a cave. You could see into the cave since they had one light down towards the bottom and the ground was sand since it wasn't anything that was finished. It was really a cave. It was pretty cool to look at since we could see it from our table. The other night that we went out to dinner was fantastic. It was a boisterous restaurant with good food. The table next to us had a guy celebrating his birthday. He and his wife and daughter are from Rome but have a place near Montepulciano so they were up for the weekend to celebrate his birthday. He was very funny and shared his champagne with us. One of the things he new about Maine was Jessica Fletcher (Murder She Wrote) so we got some laughs about that. He took a picture with Jason so that he would have a memory of Jessica Fletcher. This is the picture he took an e-mailed to us. As you can tell we were having a great time.

We ended up spending a second day in town towards the end of the week as well. We had planned on having lunch at a small town near by one day but that planned was changed when Sofia fell out of bed and smacked her head on the terracotta floor. She is fine but it was a little nerve racking since she vomited three times after hitting her head. We decided to just stay in town that day and take it easy. After sleeping on my chest for 45 minutes she was fine and ready to go. It was a big relief for me when she woke from her nap feeling better. We spent the rest of the day in town walking around and having lunch.