IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT PLATTER
Shopping, our favorite travel activity, took a back seat on this trip until today. For today it was our one and only goal and we pursued it with a focused passion and committed purpose. It was the hunt for a partner to Grandma's ceramic platter of fifteen years before. The story gets told every time we visit Armena and to anyone willing to sit through our travel stories here it goes again. Back when my mom was turning eighty, or so we thought, we brought her and two of my sisters to Italy as a birthday celebration. My mom's sense of humor included the likes of putting fake fruit in our school lunch bags or donning a pair of overalls and blackening her teeth for a school party when we were young. Then once again she played a real trick on us. For the entire trip she kept declaring, "What is a farm girl like me doing in Italy"? She waited until we returned and were back in Wisconsin to let us know that she wasn't eighty on this trip only seventy-nine and we had better be planning something else come the next year of her actual eightieth. During the now non-milestone birthday trip she managed to score a significant amount of birthday presents. One was a beautiful oversized platter painted with lemons we found at a ceramic factory near one of the hill towns in the Tuscan part of our trip.
On subsequent trips to the farm I had tried to find this shop but was never successful. When my mother passed Rick inherited the platter. On this trip he really wanted to find another one similar to Grandma's with the fantasy of hosting summer dinner parties on our patio with a Tuscan theme. On previous trips we didn't have the same Google capabilities but on this trip by typing in ceramic shops near me we were able to locate the exact place where we had purchased my mom's platter.
We piled into the car and went on the hunt. The shops we had been looking for were in the equivalent of an American strip mall, a collection of four shops connected in one long odd building. We browsed from shop to shop finding some dinner plates at one shop, some gifts at another all simple and reasonable in price but when it came to the decoratively painted platters similar to my mother's the prices had jumped five times from the price I remembered paying for her not-eightieth birthday gift. We still did okay until it came time to pay. Italy's infrastructure isn't always the best. We hadn't put together the fact that all the stores had no lights on. We were to find out it wasn't due to trying to keep the heat of the day down just that the electricity was out. This meant no Internet and no way to pay with a credit card for all the pieces piled up on the counter. Fortunately, I guess, all the shops said they would hold our desired purchases. We said we'd return on Friday to settle up. Fingers crossed the electricity would be back on by then.
Bagno Vignoni was on the way back. We were now in search of lunch and figured we could find a restaurant there.
Our trip to the ceramic shops had loosened our wallets a bit more than it should have.
We were now out to buy and there was very little that was going to stop us.
Lunch became a second thought as we discovered a beautiful tiny shop run by an infectiously hospitable elderly couple.
The ceramic pieces outside the door had us pushing inside to see what they had. On the wall was the exact platter Rick had been looking for. It was his birthday and not Emmy nor I were going to stop him.
Then we all discovered their jewelry. I'm going to have to get a longer forearm or start on the other wrist.
Even Rick got into the act. He started small but he's always been a bit timid when it comes to jewelry.
After our buying frenzy we settled on Osteria del Leone for lunch.
I'm beginning to feel a bit repetitive with our meals but this artichoke appetizer of crispy artichokes fried to a golden brown and served with a Gorgonzola fondue was damn good.
Fresh pici with duck
and a special tagliolini with a cream and bacon sauce finished off the meal for Rick and me.
Emmy went for pork cheek with a red wine sauce on mashed potatoes - divine!
We made it back to the pool with enough time to add to our blistering sunburns and then it was time to start the prep for dinner.
Emmy was invited out with the younger crowd and we invited Stefania and Alessandro over for a dinner of leftovers: a kitchen sink frittata, watermelon salad, some liver pate and crostini and of course prosciutto and melon.
We were happy to be the hosts for a change and Alessandro and Stefania were delighted to be our guests.
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