Traveling Around

After a day wandering around our town of Montepulciano--some wine tasting, and a great dinner with some very fun servers in a local restaurant--we decided we were brave enough to do some exploring of the countryside.  We were a bit nervous about taking Leonardo out of his parking place, but Gio, the dapper grandpa type who owns Il Riccio, patted me on the face and said, "Duomo, duomo, duomo at every turn..." and that was his way of telling me the signs to follow coming back in to town.  Worked like a charm.  I'm going to put mostly pictures in the blog so you can see our place, our town, and some of the Tuscan countryside and places we visited.  We literally walked right into a movie set in our travels today.  Seems Dustin Hoffman is making a series about the Medici family and the crew has been in several towns, including Montepulciano.  We wondered why the gypsy-type wagon was sitting in the middle of our square, and learned today that it was a left-over prop from the filming.  We saw horses, mules, lots of men and women in period costumes, and LOTS of men with dirty and bloodied faces (make up, of course).  So here's a bit of what we've seen in the last two days...

 The entry courtyard to our hotel

Gypsy wagon in the town square

Reception and breakfast area in Il Riccio, our hotel

View from the rooftop sitting area of our hotel...just as the sun was going down

The view from the window in our room as the sun was coming up

The wall surrounding Montepulciano...and the road coming in to town

Pam at the gate of Montechiello...we had a lovely lunch on the terrace to the left

A look at Montepulciano in the late afternoon as we returned from our travels

 One of the mules on the set of the movie

Two guys...plotting??? 

Obviously the movie has a lot of dirt and gore...