Tuscany: San Gimignano & Volterra

Well, we left Rome with a bang. Got to the parking garage, where we left the car for the last 3 days, had no ticket. Dad and I remembered Mom saying to give it to her and she'll keep it in her backpack. The guy at the ticket booth was yelling at me in Italian "Biglietto"! I'm trying to explain to him we can't find the ticket. Mom's looking everywhere for the ticket. I'm ticked off completely at this point, which is not pretty. Finally the guy calls someone else, who I'm thinking will speak English. At first he was really nice (didn't speak English), but then he turned out to be kind of rude, while the first guy was starting to be nice and speak more English (amazing how that happens sometimes--hmmmm). In the end they found the record of when we parked the car and charged us for the three days, after writing Mom's driver's license # down and the contract # for our lease. It was crazy at the entrance of the parking garage, which is where we chose to load our vehicle with all our stuff. Got honked at a couple of times. Just as we take off out of Rome I put the sun visor down and out flies the parking ticket. OH MY GOODNESS! Now I remember...Mom said she was going to take it, Dad and I didn't think that was a good idea, so she suggested we tuck it in the sun visor. Funny how nobody remembered that! Oops...sorry Mom!


Arrived in San Gimignano and found our beautiful place on top of a hill. It's so gorgeous! Unfortunately all the fields are plowed and the sun flowers dry and ready to harvest. Good for the sun flower people, but would've been nice to see them standing tall and facing the sun. 

We drove over to Volterra and ate lunch there. I had spaghetti and everyone else had pizza. Again, very good! Had a piece of Mom's pizza as well. I had to go move the car cuz we parked in a residential zone, but were so hungry when we arrived we decided to eat first, move later. Mom thinks everything is so easy with driving and parking--"Oh, just park there"--I went to the one she saw on the way up to the city. It was "completo". There were police outside. I pulled over and asked them where I could park. One didn't speak English and smiled, while the other told me there were "many parkings around the city". Well, I drove around to the other side and finally found pay parking. Of course I had no cash and started to walk away. I thought I'd double check my bag and found 1.50 Euros. We got an hour of parking, now to find my family somewhere in the gates of Volterra. Oh my goodness...I started at one end and walked through this market in the square, chose a wide street that continued on, turned right...and found them! So many times I was wondering if I should go straight or right. I knew the general direction they were in and just kept heading that way. Crazy! Very cute place though. Found an amazing bakery and this beautiful leather purse shop. Wow! The market in the middle had all these candies, cookies, and nuts...and biscotti. They had these flat, thin cookies that they pressed out on this machine and then the machine would scrape it off a hot plate into a bag. Sampled some, very tasty. 

The weather was not cooperating. When we arrived in Volterra we were greeted by a ton of hail (we had to wait under a gate for it to pass). Then as we were leaving there was a crash of thunder and it started to rain. Must've been the vampires! Haha! Anne was very excited to see Volterra after watching New Moon. 

We got back to the hotel and were all so tired. Everyone napped this time, except me. I did relax though. 


The guy at our hotel recommended a place for dinner. It was very nice, but wasn't easy to find. There weren't very good signs in town--Il Pino was the name. However, we sat down to look at the menu and there was almost nothing Mom could eat. I found an eggplant & ricotta ravioli. Delicious! She did find salmon, which was pretty good. The portion sizes were very small though. Dad's risotto was soooo tiny! Good thing he ordered the hearty Tuscan soup to start. 

We're all very tired and Anne & I have started to giggle. Not good. We need bed! Buona notte!