San Gimignano is an Italian hill town famous for its many towers. Though there were once 72 towers, only 14 still exist. We were lucky, and the rain did let up for a good part of the day (about half). We arrived walked through town to find the monastery that we are staying at: Foresteria Monastereo di San Giroiamo. While walking to the monastery, a lady in her car pulled up next to us. She pulled out a business card for a hotel in the center of town. We figured that she needed help getting there, so we pulled out our map and tried to show her how to get there. Sadly, what she really wanted to do was to get us to stay at her hotel. She kept pointing at her eyes and saying “beautiful.” We politely agreed, but we were quite confused about what was going on. I eventually figured it out and we said that we were very happy to stay at the monastery. We walked up to the entrance, buzzed, and were let in by a very friendly nun. She chatted with us for a bit and then showed us to our room. It was kind of cold, but it is large and clean. I suppose that we won’t get much out of staying at a monastery, but the thought is very cool.
We ate some lunch and then left for the town center. We saw a beautiful overlook, and then went to the Pallazo Communale, which consists of a museum, picture gallery, and a tower. The best part, of course, was the tower. However, by the time we got to the top, it was raining again! I got pretty grumpy, and lost my cool, but after calming down and waiting for about 20 minutes, the rain letup and we were able to take some awesome pictures from the top of this tower. The tower was tall and the scenery was gorgeous. The surrounding small farms are built on hills and you can see the neat rows of trees and grape vines. Everything looks green and fertile. Looking out at the country and the roofs of the houses in this town really makes me want to pack everything up and move to Italy.
We visited a free but terrible one room wine museum, the Rocca (an old fort) that had more tremendous views of the country, a much better place for wine tasting, and also a cheese store that advertised cheese tasting. However, after sampling four cheeses, the lady got fed up and told us to leave. Jeremy was going to buy something, but I was very annoyed at her attitude, and we just left. Listen lady, learn something from this. Don’t advertise something if you don’t really do it.
We had decided to purchase some pasta and sauce for dinner tonight. Everything is so expensive, and pizza is good but we don’t want to get tired of it. We were able to spend about 8 Euros and purchase a big pile of noodles and some boar tomato sauce! We will use the kitchen at the monastery to cook it up. Anyhow, the shop that we had wanted to buy it at was closed when we arrived. Happily, the shop keep here was nice! He opened up the store, helped us to select our sauce, let us sample a cheese (and we bought a hunk of it) and got me down some bread. Thank goodness for kind people.
It’s now raining pretty steadily, and we had really seen most of what San Gimignano had to offer. It’s a town for experiencing in nicer weather, and in the rain, outdoor locations lose a good deal of their charm. So back to the room to settle in before preparing dinner.
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