Dec 3, 2009

Romantic Italian Getaway, Pt. 1

Orvieto and Terre di Nano

By Lisa T. Bergren

Day 1: Umbria (near Orvieto)—Friday eve

Giampiero, our host at the Locanda Rosati, welcomes us to a cellar table of twenty-some people, already well into their third course of the meal. He rises, shakes our hand, touches our shoulder and says with a smile, “I about to call the polizia,” meaning he was vaguely worried about our late arrival.

He shows us to our room, two floors up, and then we hurry down to join the party, which appears to be a nightly event. We’ve endured a transatlantic flight, a ridiculously long wait for our rental car, heavy Friday night traffic out of Rome, and a frustrating, follow-our-nose process of finding the inn. We’re eager to be still. Settled.

By the time we finish our deviled egg salad and the second course, what our tablemates correctly describe as “heaven on a plate”—an al dente rigatoni and delicious tomato/pork cheek dish—along with our first glass of chianti, we begin to calm down. The next dish is roasted pork, tossed with fennel grilled with butter and parmesan. Giampiero sits beside us, six feet of languid, relaxed host, generous with his laughter and smiles. He smiles even more broadly as we rave about the food, truly one of the finest meals we’ve ever enjoyed. Giampiero makes his guests feel as if there is no place he’d rather be than here, spending time with you, making sure this is one of the most memorable, fantastic nights of your life. And he’s pretty successful at it. Tim and I look at each other, grin, and think, at last we are in Italy.

I chat with John, a hospice worker from central California to my left, and two American attorneys on Tim’s right. There is also a couple from Norway, and a U.S. Navy family from Naples. As Giampiero opens several more bottles of chianti—his own label—we find out there are also people at the table from Switzerland, Norway, France and Rome. It’s like a grown-up’s version of a youth hostel. By the time we move to tiny glasses of grappa, most of the party fades upstairs to their rooms and the Americans congregate at our end of the table.

A bit later we venture out to the pool, where the three most inebriated Americans are taking a chilly October swim. I follow Tim up the hill, past the silhouettes of cypress spires clearly visible by the light of a three-quarter moon, gliding in and out of swiftly moving clouds. We move through a grove of young olive trees to the end, where we can look out and over a deep valley, to Orvieto, her cathedral glowing like a warm crown atop the hill city’s head.

We return to the villa, make our way upstairs, fall into our bed and are immediately fast asleep.

Directions: The directions on the map and web site our lousy. Others who had a GPS said that at one point, it wasn’t registering the road and they had to go by gut instinct too. It’s helpful to travel by daylight. Know you are going up the hill beyond Orvieto, and that you’ll eventually be high enough to look down upon it. Look for signs for SS71 and Tamburino and Bolsena. You’ll pass through Tamburino, and climb higher. The Locanda Rosati is on your right, about 8-9km from Orvieto. Trust us, it’s worth the hassle to find.

Day 2: Orvieto, and Terre di Nano, Pienza—Saturday

We force ourselves out of bed by nine, trying to get into our new time zone schedule, shower, pack and grab some caffeine to snap out of our jet lag fog. Breakfast ends at 10:30; we realize, belatedly,  that our clocks were reset an hour off and everyone else is long gone. The staff graciously agrees to bring us cappuccino and lemon cake anyway. Giampiero advises us on Etruscan sites to see (I’m researching for a novel) and places to eat in Lucca, if we get that far north.

We pause partway down the hill to enjoy an amazing view of the hilltop town (see our VIDEO here), then drive over to Orvieto and park in a public lot on the eastern side. It looks like it will be a long climb to the top, but the parking garage has a series of escalators through an upward tunnel that makes it easy. Our goal is simply to see the square.

It was into this piazza that we and our friends first stumbled into several years before, knowing nothing about the hilltop town’s history. We had only seen it from the A1 freeway and knew we had to go up and explore! So Tim and I meander back through the winding streets, and come upon the ornate cathedral again. This time, it’s open, and we wander inside, gawking at its towering columns of striped marble, black and white, like Siena’s Duomo. Mass is occurring in a chapel up to our left, so we walk by on hushed feet. We grab a bite to eat at a small, casual café, then walk to the Pubblico, a Medici building, and another small, ancient church.

We make our way back to the car and find our directions to the villa where we’re staying, about halfway between Montepulciano and Pienza. We’re aware it’s Saturday, and markets are closed on Sundays. So we find the Conad grocery store in Montepulciano (at the far end of town), and purchase all the ingredients we’ll need for several Italian meals—veal,  fantastic, deep red tomatoes on the vine, fresh mozzarella, pecorino cheese, rich olive oil and sweet balsamic vinegar, crusty bread, fruit, peppers. Then we drive up and through the hills of Toscana to Terre di Nano, a place we’ve been dreaming about for months.

Terre di Nano

Christina, a small, pear-shaped woman with a broad swoop of a smile, greets us and shows us to La Cassetta, our villa on the Terre di Nano property. We stand outside and gaze across the panoramic view. I clap, I’m so excited. “It is as you imagined?” she asks. “Beyond it,” I respond, “but I had a pretty good idea.” I tell her we’ve had this particular view—a picture we swiped off the internet—as our screensavers for months. It was this view, shown in Conde Nast’s Traveler, that first made me look the inn up on the web. Of course, it’s a hundred times prettier in real life. “We see everything from up here,” Christina says proudly. Her tone implies What else could you possibly want? And at this moment, we are in complete agreement with her.

Tim and I pour ourselves a drink and sit outside to watch a rainstorm move in, obscuring our view of Monticchiello—an ancient medieval town with a sinking tower across the way—and cooling the air by ten degrees. We decide to make our first dinner casual, coaxing a fire to life in the fireplace, and dining on a plate full of cheese, bread, tomatoes and olives, washed down with copious amounts of red, this time, the fruit of Terre di Nano’s own vineyards.

We talk for hours, and I decide that this is the best part of traveling for a couple, especially for parents with kids at home—we have the luxury of time and attention for each other for the first time in years.

Later in the week, we plan to explore Monticchiello, Montalcino, Pitigliano, Pienza and Montepulciano.

SEE OUR OTHER FIVE POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

READ PART 1: Umbria and Orvieto

READ PART 2: Monticchiello

READ PART 3: Montalcino

READ PART 4: Pitigliano and Saturnia

READ PART 5: Pienza

READ PART 6: Montepulciano

Have YOU been to Orvieto, Pienza or elsewhere in Tuscany? Please share in the comments below!