We had a spell of hot weather, with highs in the high 80’s, so we decided to visit some gardens, figuring they would have a little bit of shade.
And they did. We visited Villa Lante on Saturday, in the town of Bagnaia, and Villa Este on Monday, in the town of Tivoli. Lante had the more ornate mansion, but Este had the better gardens, full of whimsical and fancy water features and fountains.
We spent one night in Bolsena, a cute little town situated beside a lake. We enjoyed a flat walk — finally not a hill town! — and pizza and wine at a lakeside restaurant.
A surprisingly nice town. A lot like Siena, but with fewer tourists.
We are hopelessly behind on the blog, what with our hectic road trip schedule. Which usually involves waking up at 8:30, enjoying breakfast, driving somewhere fun, walking and looking at cool stuff, eating a big lunch and drinking a bottle of wine, walking and looking some more, arriving at our next hotel, taking a nap, then going out for more fun and food and wine in the evening.
But here are some photos and highlights from our slow meandering from Siena and Rome, a total of 227 kilometers in ten days.
We made the decision to stop walking the Via Francigena while we were in Siena. We decided that the hot, long days on the trail were not conducive for seeing everything we wanted to see. And drinking all the wines we wanted to drink.
So we rented a car and turned our long walk into a leisurely road trip. It turns out the stages of the Via Francigena are much longer than the stages of the Camino in Spain, with way fewer places to stop and enjoy a cup of coffee or a lunch on the trail.
And since this is a holiday, we felt we were missing too much by getting up at the crack of dawn — to avoid the heat — and walking 8-10 hours a day.
Our Volkswagen T-Roc is much faster than our hiking shoes, and more comfortable to boot. So we are now wandering backroads and rural byways from hill town to hill town, stopping where and when we like and still walking almost ten miles a day.
Thursday saw us walking from Montereggioni to Siena, a relatively easy walk of ten miles or so, under cloudy and much cooler skies.
The day began with breakfast, hung just outside our door in a nice little cardboard box. Inside was bread and a sandwich, and we ate upstairs in the sitting area of our B&B before heading out.
The walk was much easier today and generally pleasant, except for the last mile or so, which saw us walking along a busy city street as we made our way through the outskirts of town before arriving in the old center of Sienna.
We celebrated with a beer, of course, and an evening walk around town, followed by dinner.
The next day — Friday — was a day off from the trail and we walked a good 6 1/2 miles around town.
The skies were blue and the sights were impressive, as was the food. We ate lunch at a great little restaurant Sandy had visited years before, with he friend Colleen, and found the food, and its Michelin star, firmly intact.
After lunch, we toured the Cathedral and walked as many streets as we could find, admiring the views and saying our favorite travel word (besides “wine”) every five to ten minutes: “Wow.” As in, “Wow, that’s old.” And, “Wow, that’s beautiful.”
We splashed out for dinner and then went straight to bed, which was very easy because our hotel was just right upstairs.
Wednesday was another long, hot day. It started off cool enough, but then the going got rough when the clouds burned off and the sun shined down on the verdant hills.
We left San Gimignano bright and early, with 19 miles ahead of us to Monteriggioni. The path was pleasant in the morning, and we made it about halfway, to Colle di Val d’Elsa, by lunch. We amused ourselves along the way by making silly videos and admiring the countryside.
We ate lunch in the shade on a beautiful pizza restaurant terrace, then geared up for the afternoon’s walk, which began along the Elsa River, a small river riddled with small waterfalls and impossibly blue pools and water.
The river trail was covered in deep shade, so the going was not hot, just slow, with many twists and steps and uneven river crossings.
We made it to Colle di Val d’Elsa about 3:00pm and realized that we still had eight miles to go. After doing a little math, and looking up the bright, hot sun, we decided to call it a day and took a cab the rest of the way to Monteriggioni, where we enjoyed the afternoon with a glass of wine and ate dinner outside in the piazza.
Partly cloudy and mostly awesome is how I would describe the day today, Tuesday. The clouds provided a welcome relief from the sun, and the countryside inspired us with vineyards and trees — Trees! With deep shade! Which Sandy said, at one point today, are her two favorite words.
Today’s leg was relatively short — only nine miles, and not too much of it in the direct sunshine. Like yesterday, it undulated over and between hills, but there was shade much of the time today, beautiful, glorious shade which was even nicer when the breeze picked up.
There were wineries along the trail, too. Right along the trail where you could walk in and order a glass of Sangiovese, or a blended white wine, which we did for lunch.
There were also streams and farmhouses, and off in the distance, our destination, San Gimignano, another hill town, which kept an eye on us as we slowly made our way across the valleys and ridges.
Today was so much easier than yesterday, and we took silly photos and chatted amiably as we ambled along.
San Minignano is a tourist town, filled with some hikers, more bikers, and way more day trippers and out of towners than the previous two places we’ve been.
But we didn’t care. We found a place to sit near the town gate, where waves of tourists flowed steadily by, and toasted our day with Aperol Spritzes for me and our friend Suzanne, and a G&T for Sandy.
Monday morning, our first official day on the trail, broke cloudy and cool, with a little fog thrown in for good measure. Perfect shorts and windbreakers weather for us cool weather Bay Area people who have grown used to fog and overcast skies and warm days reaching all the way up the mid-70’s.
We left San Miniato at 8:30am, equipped with salami and bread sandwiches, chocolate Kind bars, and four bottle of water between the two of us. The Tuscan landscape rose and fell at increasingly challenging intervals, the downhills getting shorter and shorter while the uphills grew taller and taller.
The trees also thinned out until we were walking on exposed dirt roads, each one sunnier and warmer than the last, until we were walking in direct sunshine, in about 84 degrees of heat.
We made it close to twelve miles, but then Sandy starting feeling dizzy and nauseous and we wisely called it a day and called the bed and breakfast where we were staying the night and asked for a ride.
Which the owner of the B&B, a young Italian man in his mid-30s, graciously provided, driving out to pick us up himself and ferry us back to his place for a nice cold shower, a short walk into the center of town, and a cold beer and salty snacks.
On the short drive into Gambassi Terme, the B&B owner told us that most restaurants in town were closed on Mondays, but his mother would be cooking dinner that night and we could enjoy her food sitting out on the lawn overlooking the countrside.
“Three courses, plus wine, 25 euros apiece,” he said.
Dinner consisted of lasagna, followed by sliced pork and green beans, and finished with tiramisu. A bottle of red wine — Syrah– was included, and when he brought out the wine he pointed down the hill at a yellow building beside a vineyard and said, “The wine comes from there.”
We ate dinner with a woman named Suzanne, who we met walking that day, and who also overheated on the trail and rode into town with us in the B&B owner’s car. After dinner, we went straight to bed and slept for a good nine hours.
Sandy & Tom 