After checking out from our hotel, we left our bags and headed into the plaza right outside where the Florence Gelato Festival was just starting. We bough a pass to try four flavours and a gelato cocktail. We tried a salted caramel, a cherry, a cookie, and a coffee one. They were so amazing! Definitely the best gelato we'd ever had. But that's what you would expect from "gelato masters" and their apprentices.
We picked up the car and headed out into the Tuscan countryside. We didn't get there as quickly as we'd anticipated. But that was only because we had to keep pulling over to gawk and take pictures of the breathtaking scenery.
We found the manor house we were staying at in Radda in Chianti but when we drove up the hill on a narrow, cobblestone road full of shops and pedestrians we had serious doubts that we were supposed to be driving on it. Jeff attempted to ask an old woman on the street but she didn't speak English so we just got out of there as quickly as we could, parked the car and walked back to the hotel. Turns out the road was, in fact, restricted but that with a pass hotel guests are allowed to drive the car up to drop off luggage. When shown our room the porter told us we had the best view. When he pulled back the curtain to reveal the rolling hills and vineyards we completely agreed.
We spent some time walking around the town taking in the views and enjoying the fresh clear air which had a tinge of wood smoke to it and smelled wonderful.
We stopped for supper at a small bar which had a small but delicious menu including the most fantastic boar stew with white beans, and had our first tasting of Chianti wines.
The next day we headed out on the road to the near by town of Volpaia for a winery tour and tasting. The town is tiny, only 40 people, and dedicated pretty much exclusively to wine and olive oil. Alessandra showed us through the winery, which is set up in the cellars of a few different buildings, and olive oil mill before setting us up with 4 different tastings of wine. Jeff only did partial tastings as he had to drive, but Alaina took care of the leftovers admirably. After we did the tasting we stopped at one of the two restaurants in Volpaia which is run but a wonderful and completely stereotypical Italian mother. The food was good, and the atmosphere was fantastic.
We headed back to Radda and decided to make use of the hotel pool which was located in a cozy little building next to the hotel while we killed time before the cooking lesson we had booked for that night. The cooking lesson was more of a cooking demonstration, but the pair that did the cooking were very entertaining, and the food was fantastic.
We spent our last day in Radda wandering around the city and surrounding country side, doing a little shopping, and a few wine tastings. We had our last supper on a beautiful little patio with a view over the hills.
As the rally ended, the rain started and drove us randomly into one of the more famous pizzerias in Rome (Pizzeria Bottiglieria) for supper. Half the tables in the place were reserved, but we were lucky and showed up shortly before the place got really busy so managed to get a table (and a 1 Litre beer).
We wanted to see as much as possible in Rome so we got a bit of an earlier start to the day and headed down to the Vatican to see St. Peter's Basilica and the view from the dome. We got down to St. Peter's square and joined the long, but quickly moving, line to go into the basilica. The line which, shortly there after, ground to a near halt when mass started... We ended up waiting almost 3 hours to get into the basilica, but the weather was nice, we got to see the pope do mass on the screens in the square, we got to see the pope do a blessing from his balcony (the crowds became huge to receive the blessing), and the basilica and views from the dome were amazing.
After we finished at the basilica, we stopped for a quick lunch before hopping 2 subway lines to get to the other end of old Rome to visit the colloseum and the Roman Forum archeological site. We finished in the area snacking on olives and enjoying a massive beer from a caffe overlooking the colloseum.
We headed back to the hotel to shower and get cleaned up before heading back out for supper. We had a few suggestions on places to try from Katie so we started on our way over to where they were located, during which we happened to stumble across the Spanish Steps, and the Trevi Fountain. We didn't actually make it we far as the suggested resteraunt, instead picking one at random, which again, turned out to be fantastic. We had to run to get back to the metro station to make the last train of the night (at 11:30), but made it with a minute to spare. We grabbed a gelato on the way back to the hotel before collapsing into bed after an exhausting day.
