The Road to Montepulciano

Our day began in Orvieto with the delicious tart and cookies that Sabrina had left for our breakfast. It was probably the only time in their lives that my children will hear me tell them to eat their breakfast cookies. After breakfast, we headed down to the station, where our train ended up being delayed by forty minutes, which, of course, meant that we missed our connecting train to Siena and ended up taking the bus instead. The bus went over some very winding but beautiful stretches of road to get us to Siena. Unfortunately, Dalton, Maggie, and Michelle all noticed the winding bits more than the beautiful bits, and Dalton and Maggie ended up using the “airsickness” bags provided. I thought Michelle was going to as well, but she made it through. Our bus companions were, I think, very grateful to get off. Upon arriving at Siena, we got our rental cars and proceeded to drive towards Montepulciano. As we hadn’t actually had lunch, we stopped on the side of the road in an olive vineyard for “lunch”, which consisted of apples, olives, bread, cheese, and millefoglie – a sort of sweet cookie. After this stop, we headed onwards.

Our train delay meant that we arrived in Montepulciano somewhat late and didn't get the chance to explore the town. Upon our arrival, (and after a few wrong turns) we checked into the Hotel Sangallo, where Dalton and Maggie met “Hotel Dog” (their name, not mine). The Sangallo is a bit outside of town, but our host was very friendly, even if he spoke very little English. My Italian is pretty limited, being the result of about seven weeks of intermittent reading of a beginning Italian book, so I only caught about maybe a tenth of what he said. He did recommend the Tre Stelle restaurant to us, which was about a mile or so down the road, and it was there we went after our brief settling in.

The Tre Stelle turned out to be really good. One of the good things about asking locals where to eat is that you will sometimes find some really good food. Of course, the obverse is that sometimes you will find some not so good food – but it’s all part of the adventure, I think. We enjoyed a good meal: pizza for Dalton, spaghetti for Maggie, and more pasta dishes for Michelle and me. One might think that we would be getting tired of the pasta by this time, but I certainly wasn’t. On the contrary, I was beginning to understand how someone could eat pasta every night without tiring of it. We returned to the hotel, gave Dalton some more medicine, and went to bed.