We're in the home stretch...
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - We enjoyed a nice buffet breakfast in the dining room at Villa di Piazzano on the outskirts of Cortona, Italy, and prepped for our day of sightseeing in Tuscany. There are dozens and dozens of picturesque, sun-drenched hill-towns in this beautiful part of the world. We decided to drive to Montepulciano, one of the three destinations to which our tour guide would have taken us if we had elected his all-day excursion.
I think I've mentioned before that the Italians don't seem to pay much attention to the route numbers of their roads. Despite the fact that Google Maps shows all the roads in Italy with little numbered markers, like "SB35," the road signs in this part of the world don't abide by this convention. Instead, you have to know the name of the next town that you will pass through on your excursion. For example, there is no sign right outside Cortona that directs you to say, Montepulciano. Instead, there will be a sign that might point you to the left at a roundabout and say "Campacio." That's fine if your want to go there, but is not much help if that is not your chosen destination. To get to Montepulciano, I made a list on my pocket notepad of the towns that I figured we would pass through to get there: Saint Angelo, Campacio, Montalla, Ossaia, Riccio, La Caselle, Pietraia, Valiano, then finally Montepulciano.
This approach worked great! It took about 45 minutes, with Ronna driving and me barking out "right ahead" or "left after you go all the way around the roundabout," we approached the picturesque town of Montepulciano.
Another reason we picked this town to visit is I really like to pronounce the name... "Mon-te-pool-CHA-noh!" It also is one of the few Italian wines that I know and really like. We found a parking meter spot just a bit away from one of the wall openings to the old town. These Tuscan hill towns typically have an ancient, massive rock wall surrounding them.
Montepulciano has some of the attributes of Cortona, but is much more hilly. It's famous for excellent olive oil and of course, their fine wine. Both a "Nobile" Montepulciano that is aged, and a "Rosso" Montepulciano that is younger and cheaper. We strolled through the medieval paths and roads ending up near the top of the community in their large main Piazza. Unfortunately, it was about 1 pm and most of the shops were closed for their mid-day break.
We had spied an attractive restaurant with a nice view of the Tuscan valley on our way up the hill... but finding it again was a bit of a challenge. We were determined to find a short cut to make the walk down the hill a bit quicker. After several false starts, we ended up back on the main street of the town, quite close to our restaurant destination. These hill town walks are great for burning off last night's dinner!
We had a nice lunch, with Ronna having an unusual stuffed turkey roll, while I had a Tuscan frittata with pancetta and mozzarella cheese. Ronna tried the local wine, and I had a fine local beer. We had a leisurely lunch until about three when the shops reopened.
We went to a jewelry and gift shop that looked like a similar one in we had visited in Cortona. Sure enough, the man working in the shop here in Montepulciano was the same gentleman who had helped us the day before in Cortona! I wonder how many gift shops he owns in Tuscany? I think there's a bit of similarity when it comes to Italian hill towns.
By late afternoon, we decided to drive back to Villa di Piazzano and relax in our nice room. The drive back was easy by just reversing our list of towns along the way. Plus, Ronna was getting her bearings and began recognizing landmarks on the narrow Italian roads. And, she was getting really good at driving really fast!
During our shopping excursion, we had bought a bottle of Rosso Montepulciano to have as a pre-dinner wine in our room, and it did not disappoint. It was fruity but not too much so--just as we hoped; an Italian version of a nice Sonoma Pinot Noir. Since we had such a good time at the cooking class, we decided to have dinner again in the dining room of the Villa, since our new friend and teacher, Gabriela was cooking tonight.
Unfortunately, this meal was not as good as our prior experiences. When we told the front desk receptionist that we would like to dine there tonight, she said that there were many more guests than they had planned for, and there would be some small changes in the menu, which is posted daily on the reception desk. Instead of the filet of beef entree, it would be more of a kebab of beef with cherry tomatoes. Obviously that meant that they didn't have enough beef tenderloin and they were going to add some cheaper beef to the melange. That would have been fine, except when it came time to eat the dish.
Our starter, and the first course of pasta were excellent. But predictably, the beef course was terrible. I didn't eat much of my tough chunks of beef, but Ronna tried diligently to eat what she could, but suddenly discovered that a few of the pieces had an "off" taste. Our cooking school friends Jim and Corrine were also having dinner at the same time we were. And after we were both served the beef, Jim glanced at me and did a thumbs-down gesture. We both agreed, not up to par.
We moved on to dessert, a chocolate mousse which was rich and tasty. But this one little entree fall back was not a good one. Gabriela, our wonderful cooking instructor/chef made an appearance in the dining room as we were eating, but we didn't have the heart to tell her that the beef dish was not great.
The next day Ronna got a bit ill, probably from our dinner entrees. Too bad they didn't just serve a small tornado of beef filet, instead of creating a larger portions of meat chunks to make the serving look generous. It seems to be a bit of an Italian tradition of large portions in these types of places. I had asked Gabriela during our cooking class about portion size, and she said that guests in Italy demanded and deserved large portions. It was not a good philosophy this night!
Thursday, May 12, 2011 - Our time in Italy was almost done, and we had to be up early to make the drive to Florence to catch our flight to London.
We had to return our rental car at the Florence airport. With the possibility of rush-hour morning traffic around Florence, we left the Villa three and a half hours before our 1:30 pm flight departure time.
Getting back to Italy's main super highway, the A1, is much easier than trying to find a picturesque hill town in Tuscany. When you get to a major crossroad, there are green sign markers that lead you to the A1. The markers for directions to smaller towns are always in blue. Nice touch. Except if you are colorblind like me!
But no problem, we eventually found the A1 and Ronna expertly made the drive to Florence in record time.... probably because she drove at the speed of the other Italian drivers... between 95 and 100 mph! Once she got the hang of the lane change movements, she floored it like the best of them, clearly enjoying the freedom to speed like Mario Andretti…while I quietly hung on!
The only bit of stress we had is that it was not clearly indicated to us by anyone exactly where we were to return the car to the Florence Airport. On our rental contract it said "Auto Return: Auto Europe, Florence Airport, 9 Terminal Road." I figured this was Auto Europe's off-site rental return location. So I had Google-mapped "9 Terminal Road" and had screen-saved the map to that location on my iPad. But we could not figure out how to get there! After several stops at gas stations around the airport, we discovered that 9 Terminal Road was the local business office of Auto Europe, NOT where we were to return our rental vehicle. A very nice gas station attendant said, "No, you bring-a da car to the aero-port parking lot." OK, then!
They are constructing a new terminal building at the Florence Airport, and boy, do they need it! The current terminal is absurdly small, and decrepit. But security was fast and efficient, and we got a seat near the gate to wait for our Air France/CityJet flight to London City Airport, a closer-in London airport that can handle smaller regional jets.
As is the custom in a lot of European Airports, we got on a bus at the airport gate to go to the plane. Unfortunately, sixty passengers crammed into a motor coach at the appointed time, only to sit there for 10 minutes for no apparent reason! Why not board the passengers when the bus is ready to move out, letting us wait comfortably inside at the gate, instead of having us stand up in a crowded, stationary bus! When I run my airport, I'm going to do things differently!
In retrospect, the bus wait was minor compared to how COOL CityJet was! Air France farms out their short-hall flights to CityJet, much like United or Delta farm out their flights to Mesa Airlines or United Express. CityJet is London-based, flying very cool RJ-235 FOUR engine regional jets that are freakishly wide, but quite short. They look like ugly "fat-f*ckers." But they can land on very short runways and are a joy to ride!
The first six rows of the plane were reserved for "Premiere Class" ticket holders. We moved past to our two aisle seats, 8C and 8D. For some reason the middle of the plane was totally occupied, but in the rear there were lots of open rows.
As they sealed the door anticipating departure, the attractive French-accented, African-European flight attendant told a passenger in a middle seat in the row in front of us that she could move to any vacant seat now. So we took the cue too and moved up to the third row on the plane, a window and aisle on the left side in the "Premiere" section! I've never been able to do that in 40+ years of airline travel!
It was like moving to First Class. Premiere seats had more leg room and we got to get off first. Even better, they serve free drinks to the whole plane -- it was great! We also had complimentary turkey sandwiches and very attentive service. All this for a $79 ticket. And I paid for our airline travel before the dollar crashed in value against the Euro! Yippee!
Landing in London was smooth as could be, and soon we were in a new generation London Cab (which I don't like... more about that in my sidebar) headed to our hotel in Mayfair. Although London City Airport is a bit closer to Central London than Heathrow, it isn't any quicker to get to the middle of the city on a Friday afternoon. Our cab ride was hammered by city street traffic, two tunnels under the Thames, and then horrible jams on Piccadilly Street because of road construction. The route to Heathrow is mostly on a highway, so I don't think it is much of an advantage to land at City, except it is smaller and perhaps a bit easier in and out of the planes.
The May Fair Hotel is not a typo. For some reason they separate the words, unlike the area name, "Mayfair." Anyway, this hotel we had booked on our own at hotels.com. It was a very nice property, newly refurbished with modern amenities and pleasant public spaces. We were assigned to a room about as far from the elevator as you could find and it had a phone that kept flashing a "message waiting" light. We should have resisted the temptation to unpack and asked for a different room. That phone problem became a running issue for our entire two days at the May Fair.
But we can't argue about the hotel’s location or the room size... both excellent. After unpacking one more time for the last two days, we took a nice walk around the Mayfair district of London, admiring the gorgeous street exposures of the high-end shops in the area. Between the paint colors, the graphics and the signage, London designers do a masterful job of making storefronts look fabulous. The typefaces, the lighting, the door hardware... everything gives an image of class and I'm sure this is part of the appeal of Mayfair as a high-end shopping location.
We had seen a number of cool looking restaurants on our cab ride to the May Fair. We wandered a bit more and ended up at a very hip bar and restaurant called "@venue" on St. James Street. It was more glamorous bar than restaurant and our dinner was less than great... but we were looking forward to a full day in London ahead, so time for bed.
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