2009
Today Greta and I went to have breakfast in town so after saying farewell to her mum and Zio who have been down for at least a week, we took the bicycles out from the hut (they’ve all been recently fixed thankfully) and pedalled on down to Donoratico.
We chose our local caffe’ haunt and had a pasta con crema and a caffe’ latte. Then we strolled up the street with our bikes and browsed through shops, ran into Alessio down the street, ran into friends at a homeware store, etc then pedalled on back home.
We decided to make the journey over to Volterra for the day as it would take just under an hour to get there. The road we needed to take wound round and round and round as you made your way up the large hill to the top of the town. They’re working a lot of the land down below at the moment so it was less green and more browny in some parts as you’re driving up. Once you reach the top though, park the car and get out it has breathtaking mountainous views, and you can see the blue sea beyond.
We made our way through the streets and browsed in some shops, watched a kids potato sack race in the main piazza, strolled around some more and took some photos.
One shop we went into had lots of paper things which I’m a sucker for and I found two gorgeous postcards in the Old Pubblicita’ format that I adore so bought those: only 0,50 E each.
Then they had some larger posters for which I found a cool wine one with Greve, Chianti on it for only 5 E, a real bargain so got that. The old lady behind the counter was so lovely and cute and wrapped it up for me so it wouldn’t get damaged. She reminded me of our old cousin Anna in Asiago.
Another lovely story was when Greta and I walked into an artists shop that had the best music playing. It was like you were in a musical film from the 1920’s. To the right were some stairs where you looked up and saw the mad artist at work. He saw us, and we walked on into the shop space to browse around and he came singing down the stairs, grabbed two little things and presented us each with one saying in Italian ‘one for you, and one for you’ and gave us this tiny ceramic man head!
Then he walked back up the stairs singing his sweet little tune. We thanked him and said goodbye and went on our merry way too.
Finally on our way back through the streets we’d just been along the side of the town that faces the sea beyond the mountains and an older woman walking past us spoke out (it seemed to no one in particular) about how one can see Corsica today because it’s so clear. Greta and I had seen the land mass of la Cipria (i think it’s called), a small island off the coast from Tuscany. But thought that the large mass further in the background couldn’t possibly be Corsica because it is very rare that one can see it from Tuscany. Well, in fact it was and this woman who obviously lived in the town was clearly very excited by that fact!
La Donna del Vino 
Leave a Comment