Home of the Voltura

Our next stop in Tuscany was the small hill town of Montepulciano described in the guidebook as a town with a view and good wine.  Sounded like a perfect place to visit for Mike and I!

We found out the day prior that no buses run on Sunday’s and that the train station in Montepulciano is 10km from the city center.  Since we already had a hotel booked and would have no luck finding another room in Siena during Palio time, we decided worst case scenario we could hike the 10k with our backpacks.  It would be good training for our Kilimanjaro climb rapidly approaching in 4 weeks.

The train ride was short and we got off with 16 other folks.  The Montepulciano station was really small with no ticket booth, but a small cafe with a few older gentlemen playing cards.  We confirmed that there was no city bus however there was a taxi service!!  One of the men from the cafe called the taxi and he showed up 15 minutes later.  He was the only taxi in town so he made 3 round trips and Mike and I were on the last one.  After the drive into town, I was super thankful that we didn’t have to walk as it was hot and the last 2 miles was steep uphill!!

The town was enchanting with its narrow streets and very friendly people.  It was really small, but it had an inviting and warm feeling to it.  The views from town to the Tuscan hillside were amazing with rolling hills dotted with houses and vineyards.  It really was beautiful!

After we explored the town, we decided to enjoy the local wine.  We went to 2 cantinas but really liked the second one the best (Talosa).  They had a wine celler dating back to the 1500 which we were able to explore.  The barrels were huge and held 15000 bottles each!

The area is famous for their Nobile de Montepulciano.  The pourer at this cantina was great and you could tell how passionate he was about the wine.  We learned a lot about each wine and that they were the first region in Italy to receive a DOC rating.  The wine was amazing and we bought 2 bottles (One for that evening as we relaxed and one for our last night in Rome).

On Monday, we had a nice slow morning and checked out the rest of town center.  The cafe that we had our coffee had a poster of the Twilight movie “New Moon.”  Looking at the poster more closely, there was also a picture of Kristen Stewert (The star of the movie) at the coffee shop with the barista!  We asked and found out that the square in the movie for the Voltura scene was the town square in town!  Small world!!

Mike and I wanted to take a bus or a short wine tour, but we found out it was a holiday, Assumption of Mary, so no buses were running.  We didn’t mind spending another day relaxing so we bought picnic makings – really stinky cheese, salami, and fresh bread.  We had just found a spot in the park to eat when it started raining, so we moved it to our hotel room where we started to plan for Turkey.

We both really enjoyed our stay in Montepulciano.  The food and wine were amazing and the people were some of the most friendly people on our trip!  We were sad to leave Tuscany.

On Tuesday, we made our way back to Rome and had a business day including laundry and Mike getting his haircut.  That evening, we went to the Spanish steps with our bottle of wine in hopes of meeting our friends Michael and Danielle from Cinque Terre.  We did connect and it was fun catching up on our last few days in Italy over good wine.  Halfway through the bottle, the police came up to us and asked us to pour it out or leave.  We thought this was strange as we saw several other groups with beer or wine.  However, we didn’t want to get in trouble, so we opted to leave.  It was a nice treat to get to see Michael and Danielle again!

Wednesday was our last day in Rome as we had an evening flight to Istanbul, Turkey!  It was really, really hot in Rome so Mike and I toured a few churches to see a few more famous sculptures incluing Michelangelo’s Moses and Bernini’s St. Teresa.  Both amazing!! 

Italy was everything we hoped it would be and more!  We were sad to leave, but also excited to continue our trip to Turkey!