Recipe: Tuscany 2006 Journal Entry #9-Siena, Curtains and Boar sauce! (with photos)

Tuscany 2006 Journal Entry #9-Siena, Curtains and Boar sauce!

Wednesday, March 29th

Off to Siena at 8 am for the dry good market (La Lizza) and curtain hunting. Steve and Barbara tag along with us. We park in the parking lot Harriet gave us such great directions to at orientation. We climb the hill to the series of escalators up into town and then walk through Porte Olive.

The market is immense although somewhat repetitive. Huge tents of shoes, clothing, belts, purses, toys, curtains (not the ones I'm looking for though), dishes, kitchenware, etc. There's a tent devoted to just selling umbrellas! After a while it's just too much and we move away from it and wander thru other parts of town.

We pay to go thru the Duomo. It's Romanesque-Gothic architecture was designed by architect Nicola Pisano The exterior of the cathedral is done in multicolored marble while the Campanile, which was constructed in 1313, and the interior are decorated in black & white stripes. It's rather startling. Up near the ceiling are the busts of 172 popes. If you look at the marble floor you will see 56 panels depicting various sacred scenes. It's just amazing, so much to look at. In Italy there are churches like this, which almost over load the senses and then there are the austere ones, like St. Antimo. Inside the Duomo in Siena your eye doesn't know where to look first. The black and white columns lead your eye up to the ornate ceiling. There is some restoration going on with the floor and we spend some time watching the two workman, one old and one young work on the tile. My favorite part is the library with illuminated choir books under glass. Seeing these books was worth the whole trip to me. The colors are still so bright, the gold so shiny. They are very large books and what we saw were only a few of the pages. I wonder about the monks that illuminated these pages and also about the ones who must have protected these books through the years. It brings to mind Loreena McKinnet's song, Skellig, from her cd The Book of Secrets. (one of our all-time favorite cds)

O Light the Candle, John
The daylight has almost gone
The birds have sung their last
The bells call all to mass
Sit here by my side
For the night is very long
There's something I must tell
Before I pass along

I joined the brotherhood
My books were all to me
I scribed the words of God
And much of history
Many a year was I
Perched out upon the sea
The waves would wash my tears
The wind, my memory

I'd hear the ocean breathe
Exhale upon the shore
I knew the tempest's blood
Its wrath I would endure
And so the years went by
Within my rocky cell
With only a mouse or bird
My friend; I loved them well

And so it came to pass
I'd come here to Romani
And many a year it took
Till I arrived here with thee
On dusty roads I walked
And over mountains high
Through rivers running deep
Beneath the endless sky

Beneath these jasmine flowers
Amidst these cypress trees
I give you now my books
And all their mysteries
Now take the hourglass
And turn it on its head
For when the sands are still
'Tis then you'll find me dead

Oh light the candle, John
The daylight is almost gone
The birds have sung their last
The bells call all to mass

Her liner notes say she was writing about the Irish monks. Often the monasteries were founded in harsh, remote outposts like the Skellig Islands off Ireland's west coast. She was reading Thomas Cahill's book, How The Irish Saved Civilization. She was in Babbio in Emilia-Romagna, which Cahill says was the first Irish monastery established in Italy when renegade Irish monks were banished to the continent. One more comment on this wonderful cd, it contains The Highwayman set to music, a poem my Mother read to me as a child. Both she and my Mom did a bang-up job of it, let me tell you!

We have lunch, (pranza), at L'Osteria Del Bigelli in the Piazza del Campo where the Palio is held. It's hard to imagine what chaos it is with horses racing around this space. There are frescos on the walls. One is of a man at a bar with a cat and another is a small bird. DH had what the ristorante called, "farmhouse lasagna", he says it's the best he has ever had. I have pizza with large hunks of zucchini and peppers on it. It's also very good.

There are lots and lots of teenagers and children in town on field trips. It's very windy and cold.

We enjoy some gelato after lunch. I'm hooked on the rum-raisin!

We go back to Chiuse to drop off Barbara and Steve. Steve told us yesterday that they saw my curtains in San Gimignano in a shop, so we head out on a road trip to see if we can find them. We stop by Poggiarellino where we stayed last year to see if Moe is interested in going along and she is. While I'm up in Moe's apartment I hear a woman's voice outside and look out to see DH getting out of the car with a big grin on his face to greet Anna, our landlady from our last trip. She assures DH that she will, "do her best work" on Saturday when we are due back for a wine tasting and tour of her cellar.

San Gimignano is a small town on a hilltop completely surrounded by ancient walls. It has 13 medieval towers still standing. To get there, we head back toward Siena and then pass it by. We see signs for Poggibonsi and know we are on the right track. Poggiobonsi has LOTS of traffic circles; at one point we come out of a traffic circle and go right into another one! The signs keep saying, San Gimignano 11 miles .then the next one says San Gimignano 11 miles, then the next, San Gimignano 13 miles! The very next sign says San Gimignano 8 miles. Somewhat confusing!

We have some trouble finding a parking space once we finally arrive. We can see available spaces in one of the parking lots, but the lot is closed, the sign says it's closed because it's full. Hmmmm. Eventually we decide to park on the street and walk up, up, up to town. This town is beautiful, with gorgeous views. (I'm sensing a theme.) Lots of teenagers here, too. We find the shop with my curtains in the window! Truth be told, it's not really curtains I have been looking for, they are valances. They are crocheted with patterns of green and purple grapes on them. The shopkeeper is very nice and he speaks very good English. There are two types of valances with grapes and he misquotes the price on the one I want, the one I passed up last trip. We decide because the price is so high to just buy enough for two of the windows in the cook's library at home. The shopkeeper then realizes the tag on the ones we want says less so we buy enough for all three windows in addition to some beautiful kitchen towels, both for us and to give as gifts. One of ours is the recipe for Ribollita in pictures, another with vino and a wine press. We buy one with a scene of Siena for a neighbor and another with pomegranates for some friends. We have purchased enough to get a tax refund at the airport if we jump through some hoops. We get the paperwork needed for this. We wander thru more of the town afterward, stopping to watch a silversmith at work for a while.



We really want to find, (and eat in), the restaurant in Monticiano (not to be confused with Montelcino) where the Untours luncheon was hosted last time. DH loved the boar sauce there. We realize that San Galgano is on the way, so we decide to show it to Moe first.

San Galgano, the ruined Cistercian abbey is missing its roof, among other things. The gothic columns and arches are amazing. It's a beautiful site to visit. All empty now, and we have the place to ourselves. It has a very spiritual feel about it. We wander for a bit. Then we head up the hill to the beehive church where Italy's "sword in the stone" is. Galgano, the son of noble parents, renounced the material world and turned to God. To symbolize his rejection of war, he tried to break his sword against a rock, but the sword was swallowed by the stone, which Galgano took to be a sign of Divine approval.

I went back and read my journal from last time and it appears I didn't mention the "run-in" DH had with the caretaker (not sure if she was a nun or not) at the little beehive church up above San Galgano. It's in my handwritten journal, but not the transcribed one. DH' "run-in" happened where the relic is of the bones of a person who tried to take the sword from the stone. We were there with Harriet and some other Untourists that day. DH held the cloth up a mite too long we guess and this caretaker appeared at his side almost magically. She was very short, only came up to DH' waist, but was certainly able to get her point across even though she spoke in very broken English. She pointed at DH and yelled, "I close gate, EVERYONE out because of you!" She continued yelling and pointing at him for some time. Everyone in our little group backed off leaving poor DH standing by himself in her circle of wrath. We aren't sure what she kept yelling in Italian, we just hoped she wasn't putting a curse on him!

We had told Moe this story on the way from San Gimignano. When get up the hill, DH gets out of our car and tries the door. It's locked. As he heads back to the car, we hear shutters open upstairs and someone calls down to DH in Italian. Rather, they yell down. DH says he's sorry he didn't know they were closed. When he gets to the car he has a smile on his face and asks me what are the odds? It's the same woman who was so upset with him on our last visit. The woman yells down some more in Italian and DH asks her if she is talking to him. She says yes. He asks if we can go in. (Meanwhile Moe is saying, "get in the car DH, just get in the car!" The woman says yes, we can go in, and sighs VERY loudly. Down she comes, out comes the key and she opens the door, all the while speaking in Italian to the many cats who have appeared around our feet. We go in and show Moe the great beehive-like ceiling. DH walks over to the gate where the relic is kept, which is closed. He puts a 20-cent Euro piece into the box for the light and Moe's gasp as she sees the beautiful fresco in that room is worth the visit! Pretty soon we hear someone clearing her throat at the door and then a big sigh. We leave, thanking the woman for being so kind as to open the door for us. DH gives her 6 Euro. She looks down at it in her hand, then lifts her head and gives him an enormous smile. All is forgiven it seems. We are happy to let Harriet know the next day that DH has righted a wrong!

Then we drive directly to Albergo Ristorante "Da Vestro"!. Moe is amazed we can find the place as it seems to be in the middle of nowhere. (And later in our trip we prove that driving directly to it is a miracle not to be repeated!) As we drive in the driveway there are lights on inside. It's about 7:30. I go to the door and find it open. I ask the woman at the desk, who I recognize from last time as the owner, if they are open for dinner and she says, "Si, si come in! Three of you? Si, si come in!" I go back out to tell DH and Moe to come in, they are open. When I get back inside the woman is on the phone and she says to me, "just one moment, I call the cook."!

We are the only customers as far as we know that night. We are treated like royalty, and then the owner recognizes us and it's like old home week when we mention we were there with Harriet last time. She kept thanking us for coming back to her place. We had wonderful, wonderful bruschetta, one with just olive oil and one with olive oil and tomatoes. Out of this world! The oil was an opaque green. Oh my !Both Moe and DH had Papparadalle with boar sauce. DH said as he was eating his that he never thought he would be there again eating it. Moe and I had Ribollita, I also had fennel fried in butter, very rich. (BUT YUMMY!)

The pictures of the boars in the snow are still on the walls, along with a portrait of the owner's father and many photos of their family, their boar hunting hounds and the awards they have won with them. She went out of her way to show us one where she was a beautiful girl of 17.

We get Moe home to bed late, around 11pm. Another wonderful day in Tuscany!