When the plans fail, there is always dinner

Even the best laid out travel plans can sometimes have unexpected 'road bumps' that get in the way. Today for us, that was the weather. While we expected we might get a little rain, we got a whole lot more. The plan was to visit Mt Amiata - highest point in Tuscany, for beautiful views. Somewhere along the journey Shannon thought it would be better to visit a small town first and get to the mountain a little later to avoid cloud coverage.

We stopped in at Montelcino - famous for Brunello di Montelcino wine. We dropped in to a couple of wine shops, sampled the goods and bought a few bottles to bring home. (that's if they make it that far!) We stopped at a little restaurant for some lunch. The pasta in this place was amazing.

We still had another hour and a half in the car before we made it to the mountain, so off we went. The road was windy and slippery as the weather turned nasty. The rain started to come down at a quicker pace. Fortunately we didn't have long to go and Shannon was handling the roads in our little Pietro brilliantly.  We pulled up and just about ran to the little bar that was open. We enjoyed a hot coffee and pastry and contemplated our next move. The rain wasn't going away and the clouds had rolled in. Even if we had have braved the rain and walked the last 350m to the top, we wouldn't have seen anything for the clouds in our way. So, we got back in our little car and drove back to La Maesta to recharge the batteries and plan the most important event of the day, dinner.

In Video;

We decided to drive in to Cortona and eat at a local restaurant. We ended up at Trattoria La Grotta - a little place we had been to on both previous Tuscany trips. To our delight, we had the same waiter as before and the food was just as good as we remember.  We ordered a medium jug of wine - a little more than half of a standard bottle and sparkling water while we perused the menu.

For entree Shannon enjoyed the Prosciutto with melon and I had the traditional bruschetta.

We both had pasta for main...Shannon a special taglietelle of the day and I the ravioli ragu. Fortunately we had saved a little room for dessert and Shannon had a chocolate ricotta cheesecake and I couldn't pass up the tiramisu - my favourite!

So while perhaps the touring part of the day didn't go to plan, the food sure did.

Tomorrow - farewell, little Pietro :-(