Monks, Wine and Chocolate - Siena, Italy
Siena, Italy
Where I stayed
Porta Pispini Residence
What I did
Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore Siena
Baptistry Siena
Duomo Museum (Museo dell'Opera del Duomo) Florence
Siena Cathedral (Il Duomo)
Today was our Sienese day. We woke a little later than anticipated (though I think we needed it after our night in Perugia), and enjoyed the fact that we could cook a hot breakfast in our kitchenette. As we headed out, there was a slightly disturbing quantity of fog. Fog has been a companion of ours since we left Naples, but it had seemed like we might have finally gotten away from it by going to Tuscany. Luckily it burned off relatively quickly, though it's pretty visible in our photos from the top of the museum.
Our main inside activity for the day was the various components of the Duomo; this includes the museum of stuff taken from it, the crypt underneath it, the baptistery around back (who needs a separate building just for baptisms? Tuscans, apparently), the library inside it, and of course, the cathedral itself. This involved a lot of very nice art, though for me, the floor of the Duomo itself was the most impressive part.
After this, we grabbed a slice of pizza for lunch and relaxed in the room for a little while before heading out the abbey which we had missed out on due my (Ben's) poor navigation. In my opinion (of course, I wasn't driving), this was worth it just for the views on the drive out. The fog had finally disappeared, and the road to the abbey runs along a ridge with great views off to both sides. The abbey itself was very pleasant, but our secret motivation for traveling out there had been to taste their wine, which had gotten high marks from the internet. We had a momentary setback when we discovered that in winter, the wine cellar is only open on the weekends, but we were able to summon the nerve to call the contact number, and were able to arrange a private (short) tour on 10 minutes notice. One of the lessons we've learned in Italy is that you really shouldn't trust that signs mean what they seem to; this is pretty annoying when a sign says"open" and the place is obviously closed, but it can work the other way around. The wine was pretty tasty, and we bought a couple of bottles to enjoy later. They also had what is surely the nicest grappa I've ever had, very smooth and subtly flavored, but we didn't want to be hauling around a bottle of that for as long as it would take to drink it.
We headed home, and then went out for dinner. After having some setbacks with recent restaurant choices, I asked Jola to choose, a responsibility she took quite seriously. I think she made a really good choice. Most distinctively, she had a dish of wild boar in chocolate sauce (not Hershey's, of course, but definitely sweet and chocolatey), which we both agreed was good to have tried but that we wouldn't order again. Dessert was also Jola's first experience with vin santo; I got a dessert that was just biscotti and vin santo to dip them in. We agreed that this was actually a good dessert to keep in mind for entertaining in the future.