We were due to pick up a friend who’d be staying a a few days with us. This was also the weekend that we discovered that Tuscany had developed some sort of weird monsoon weather front. For weeks, it would be nice in the morning, but come 11 or 12 dark clouds would gather and then it would pour rain for a while, then spatter until the early evening. We’d not seen such a prolonged weather front like in Tuscany like it before.
Friday, 2nd of June
Well, we still had one working day to see off before our 2-week holiday kicked-in. I had too much cheese for breakfast – pecorino aged under walnut leaves, with black-truffle infused honey. For lunch I had yummmy tagliatelle with ragu in Porgi L’Altra Pancia – alone! Niamh had lunch back in the apartment.
However, after work I had a wee glass of Santa Lucia’s finest to start off the holiday with a bang, and said goodbye to this precipitous drop from my ‘office’ window.
Earlier in the day during work, I had to shut the window firmly, because the sbandieratori (flag jugglers) and their accompanying band marched through the street directly outside. The window does a fab job of muffling noise, which is a good thing, as people stay up late during the summer months outside. Anyway, that march usually means something is on, and indeed it was. Every year the various contrade (neighbourhoods) compete in a couple of palii (plural of palio). In Siena, they race horses at breakneck speed around the main square. In Volterra, we have tugs-of-war in June and, believe it or not, race wheels of cheese through an obstacle course in October.
Today, it was tug-of-war day! Teams of mixed genders from all the contrade, which includes villages within the comune of Volterra. The event was delayed by the main weather feature this year: torrential rain. After a while, however, the competition-runners thought the piazza dry enough to kick off proceedings. In my humble opinion, and I would guess the opinion of the first few teams who were placed at on the southern side of the square, it was still too wet. Anyway, they had to go ahead, and arrange their teams on either side of the – I wish I knew what it was called in Italian – but it for all the world looks like the wooden base of some medieval siege engine. It was their job to tug the base over the line on their side. If both sides failed to do this, it would be in the hands of the judges as to who made most gains during that contest.
The first teams lined up, and you could see that half of the southern team had feet on wet flagstones. The competition was swift and decisive and went to the northern team. The protestations about wet ground fell on deaf ears and the competition continued. The group did begin to dry up pretty rapidly.
In the end, the victors were Villamagna – a town across a part of the Val d’Era surrounded by spectacular views. You can find the video of our trip to Vada during the previous weekend, and the palio!
After we’d watched the planting of the winning contrade‘s flag in the, er, wooden thing, and have the winning team run a couple of the circuits of the piazza, we got up and walked to L’Incontro for a quick aperitivo. Then it was off to get our usual very warm welcome at La Mangiatoia. We both opted for pizzas and beer.
There’s no pizza without beer, and this year we seemed to favour north Italian beer Først, instead of Moretti. It’s nice and refreshing! Speaking of booze, we then decided to visit Pietro in Antica Velathri Cafe for some spiffy cocktails (and to practice my Italian – he’s very kind like that!).
I think Niamh had a G+T which happily changed colour based on a light in the bottom of a glass holder. I had a lovely mixture made up by Pietro on our previous visit a few months ago: frangelico, grenadine and cointreau. Very yummy indeed.
Saturday, 3rd of June
The next day, we decided to stay in Volterra and check out the marketplace. But first, a wee walk!
After washing and re-dressing (thank goodness), we went to the market!
I think the colours of the March market were a little more vivid. What do you think? Town was getting busy and warm, and to counteract this we decided to go on a little jaunt to La Rosa after having a granita (me) and gelato (Niamh). We wanted to see if we could find the supposed new location of La Rosa’s mercato del usato (Italy’s wonderful 2nd hand bric-a-brac markets).
On the way to the car, we spotted a hen party. I thought this rather unusual for Volterra, but I’ve actually seen a couple more since. Volterra, as much as I love it, isn’t exactly party-central. It does get loud in pockets during the summer, but largely it’s quite a quiet place. But everyone’s welcome!
We went to La Rosa, and for the life of us couldn’t find the new location. The old location was firmly shut up and there was no sign of life. Google was pointing us towards the back of a warehousey-place on the opposite side of the road – and we drove around it – but no joy.
We then went into one of those ‘Chinese’ stores, which seem to be a variant on ‘pound’ or ‘dollar’ stores you’ll find elsewhere. If in Ireland, think ‘Eurosaver’ or ‘Mr. Price’. Anyway, we did have some stuff to pick up for the house… cleaning implements and sprays. We found what we needed, and then also spotted a sun-reflecting screen for a car. It’s the kind of thing you unfold against the windscreen to reflect the sun and keep your parked car relatively cool. It was only a fiver, so it went in our basket.
On checking out, we asked where the 2nd hand market was. One man in the queue behind us said it was gone, but that there was one in Capannoli – which we knew about. The Chinese lady at the register thought it was still about and maybe on the block next to her’s. We thanked everyone, and wandered out – without the sun reflector. We didn’t realise this until days later, hilariously. We had a search for the second hand market around the block suggested, but to no avail. Oh well.
It was well within the lunch hour, and not spotting what we wanted nearby, we had a look at Google maps in the car, and spotted a well-reviewed place between La Sterza and Lajatico: La Valatta – which is down in Google maps primarily as a hotel/agriturismo – and it is also just exactly that. No sooner had we selected the place and begun to leave La Rosa, it began to absolutely pelt rain. Utterly torrential, with accompanying sound and light show.
The rain didn’t let up, and when we pulled into La Valetta’s carpark, we had a 30-40 meter dash to the restaurant in the lashings of rain. We survived the run (that’s cardio for the weekend!), and walked into a completely empty restaurant. Uh-oh. I located a lone waiter and pounced, asking him if the restaurant was, in fact, open. He had to check with a colleague before confirming. We were seated and sighed in relief.
More people came in as we ate, so we weren’t entirely on our own. I have a bad habit of wanting to try a few courses in restaurants I’m eating in for the first time. So yeah, we ended up having three courses. The food here was really good, but I remember the meats being perhaps a little more gamey than you usually find in touristic towns.
By the time we rolled out of the place, the sun had come out (sort of), and we got a good look at the place from the outside.
We drove home via Lajatico, which brought us via a pretty route and that was pretty much all she wrote for that day, except that I gave our new sexy chair a go that evening.
Sunday, 4th of June
I have to shamefacedly admit that I remember precious little about this day. There’s no doubt we had a lazy one, and ate kind of light too, with Porgi l’Altra Pancia getting our love again.
I hope you enjoyed the read – let me know what you think!
Our Man In Volterra 