Catching Up

My sister and brother-in-law from Washington D.C. arrived safely yesterday, although their plane arrived two hours late into Rome. They had a bit of trouble finding our place, but we finally connected around 6 o’clock.

We got their suitcases into the house, and then we drove into San Gimignano. Bill and I had made reservations at the Trattoria Chiribiri, a tiny little restaurant that has some of the best Tuscan food in the area. We all shared a variety of pastas, including a wide pasta with the wild boar sauce that is very typical of the San Gimignano area. We also shared some meat dishes, and of course some red wine. It was all very yummy.

Though by the time we finished dinner, most of the stores were closed, we walked around the town a bit. San Gimignano is one of my favorite towns in all of Italy. It is a hill town, so it involves a bit of climbing, but then what else is new? It is most well known for its towers. At one time, it has more towers than any other town in Italy. The towers make it especially pretty when looking at it from a distance. Because we had eaten wild boar for dinner, we couldn’t resist taking the photos of the rather ugly animals in this store window. They are, of course, stuffed. By that time of the night, and following our big dinner and gelato, so were we!

We got home, and they got settled into the little mansard area up above. The area has two little twin beds, and you literally can’t stand up straight because the ceilings are so low (unless of course you’re only three feet high). As you can see from the photo, my sister and brother-in-law will probably walk hunchbacked for eternity after spending 10 days crouching over.

We will take it rather easy today since they will still be jet lagged, though they purport to have slept well last night. We will likely just show them around our little town of Certaldo, and then they might drive again into San Gimignano to visit the stores when they are open.

I have one funny Italian story before I sigh off:

We were having lunch in the Trattoria Chiribiri in San Gimignano the other day (we had to try it out in preparation for my sister and brother-in-law) and an American sitting in the next table told the waiter that he had tried the regional white wine, Vernaccia di San Gimiagnano, and wondered whether there was a regional red wine that he could try. Well, San Gimignano sits smack dab in the Chianti region and is close to the Chianti Classico, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile de Montepulciano regions. We wondered what the waiter thought about the American’s question. Perhaps the guest had been dropped into the restaurant from a spaceship and had not noticed the numerous stores in San Gimiagnano which were selling countless fiascos of local Chianti wine or the signs around the area for the Chianti road which passes local wineries.