ROAD TRIP
Sometimes a little event can contain great meaning and joy. The morning of our ninth day Emmy made me breakfast. It might not have been a grand event; breakfast is an ordinary part of daily life, but the joy of watching her go through the steps of preparing breakfast made me realize more than I ever had before the preciousness of her. I watched every element from toasting the bread in an open oven to patiently attending to the egg making sure when she placed it on the toast it would be a perfect sunny-side-up egg, to cutting pieces of scallion for a hint of sharpness to the final dish. She made a duplicate for herself. We sat down together cutting into the egg and letting the runny yolk ooze out onto the plate covering the dish in a rich golden tangerine. It was a simple gesture, it might not have meant anything special to her but for me it made me proud that she was my daughter.
After lunch it was decided that we'd all do a little day tripping before our final day with everyone still at the farm. The eight of us piled into two cars with a plan we'd all go to San Quirico d'Orcia to do some shopping and site seeing. Eric and Laura had a mission. On their last trip Eric had spotted a painting he couldn't quite decide if he should get. The painting played on his mind until he was convinced he needed to go back and get it on this trip if: one the store still existed and two if the painting was still there unsold to someone else.
We walked from one end of San Quirico's main street to the other finally finding the store on the last bit of real estate on the street. It was closed. That may bring an end to the search but then again it may not.
It seemed strange, San Quirico being a tourist destination, but most of the shops were closed. We found out that for various reasons the pandemic included many shops had chosen to only open on the weekends. We were forced to restrain our shopping to window-shopping. With the disappointment of finding the shop with the painting closed, Laura and Eric decided to go back to the farm. They graciously took Roby with them. Roby is definitely not a shopper. Laura had decided on a meal plan for the evening's dinner. They would stop at the coop on their way back to pick up what she needed.
That left the five of us, Rick, Emmy, JoHannah, Adam and I, to continue on to Pienza for lunch and site seeing but most likely a lot of shopping.
Pienza is a Disney-esk hill town ordered to be constructed by Pope Pius the II in the late sixteenth century. It had been the town Pope Pius II had been born in, a shabby insignificant village. Taking the better elements of earlier Italian architectural styles he elevated the towns prestige and in doing so his own.
It's beauty was used to capture the scenic background for Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 movie "Romeo and Juliet". Every corner of Pienza offers a photographers dream of composition. Walking into the interiors and side alleys is like walking into Zeffirelli's movie.
We ate at the Tratoria La Buca delle Fate for lunch. Once again the food was spectacular.
I looked like such a gourmand with three plates spread out before me but my lunch was really quite simple: prosciutto on one plate, the melon on another and a bowl of baked pecorino with bacon.
When I write it out is sounds like a lot more than it was.
After lunch we walked back down streets retracing our way back to the car and then off to Armena. For almost every day since we arrived I had been searching for the perfect poppy field to capture that striking red against the vibrant green only see in springtime. I finally found that perfectfield etween Pienza and San Quirco. We stopped the car, Emmy, Adam and I went out into the field and this is what we saw.
By the time we returned to Armena Laura had already started preparing dinner. We ate again under a canopy of green lit with little globes of amber light and a background of Tuscan hills now turning shades of violet, lilac and blue.
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