After tidying ourselves up, we went outside to the market to buy sundry knick-knacks for the house. Once my head is protected, it’s not often I actively seek shelter, but while shopping there the sun was scorching, so I ducked out of the light as often as possible. Fortunately, stalls have their own covers and awnings, so it wasn’t too much trouble.

We went to other shops in town to grab some meats and veggies for dinners for the next couple of days. We both agreed that we needed a short break from pasta!

On the way back to the apartment, I grabbed myself a lemon granita from L’Isola del Gusto. It was fab. After a short time in the apartment, I went out to La Sosta del Priore and grabbed a burger there for lunch. It’s not the be-all and end-all to look at, but God did it taste so good. They put it with caramelised onions and a type of mayonnaise that tastes amazing. I will be back for one of those again next week!

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We blew much of the rest of the afternoon in the apartment, in an effort to escape the searing sun.  Suddenly, around 17:15, we heard a hullabaloo outside the guest bedroom, which looks down into the main street.  It was a cacophany of drums and trumpets, so we guessed that it must have been something to do with the impending Medieval fair.

We dollied-up as quickly as possible and went to the main square.  There was a wedding there, and I think they had to be given the bum’s rush at 18:00, so the Medieval procession could start.

Anyway, shortly after 18:00, the MC, fully dressed in oldie-worldy garb, started reciting Italian poetry, and announced the lords, ladies and representatives of both the sbandieratori (flag tossers) and balestrieri (crossbow men and women) for Volterra’s 8 contrade (districts), who will be in competition.

Afterwards, there was a very impressive display by the sbandieratori, who are among Italy’s best.

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When I get the time/bandwidth, I might stick up a couple of vertical, shaky, iPhone videos 🙂

Once this was all done and the festival declared open, we went home to have a meal.  We’d bought a rotisserie chicken from one of the market’s foodstalls earlier in the day, and so Niamh put together a lovely meal.  She baked rosemary fries (an oxymoron, I know), and they were fantastic.

While out on the terrace, we heard some music, and so washed the dishes and went out to have a gawk.  We found some medieval buskers.  They were great players, and had a little coterie of people following them about town.  I uploaded the video to Facebook – hopefully you can see it there.  We inadvertently joined them for a little while, as we wanted to go for a drink on Via Gramsci.  We ended up in the Antica Velathri Cafe again.  I had a fab chilled mulled wine there.  I’d give it another go!

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We then went back home and vegged out on the couch for a while, before going to bed.

I slept right through ’til 05:30, which is unusual for me, and so headed out early to see if I could find if any more stuff had been set up for the festival.

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It’s supposed to hit 35+ celsius today, so I, for the first time in a long time, will be showing off some ankle and calf in very fetching shorts.  We’ll probably spend a lot of time outdoors today, so I expect tomorrow’s blog will be very media-heavy – apologies in advance!  We’re both really looking forward to this!

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