7 Nov 2024 – Our Man In Volterra

Unsurprisingly, we came back!

And what a day to come back to! There were multiple celebrations on the 2nd of September:

It’s our wedding anniversary
We came back to Volterra
Lajatico had its annual ‘foods of the world’ festival
It was Volterra’s White Night

It was kind of the locals to throw those two festivals on for us to help celebrate our anniversary. As we’d seen a bit of Volterra, we decided to take our friend and head over to Lajatico in the baseless hope that there’d be some Asian food to be had. There wasn’t any, but we found Lajatico to be buzzing with life and had some nice Ukranian and Romanian grub anyway!

But first, our car. We hired the car and drove it away without incident to Volterra, but due to it being parallel parked when we found it, rather than being in its own bay, we failed to spot damage to one of the front corners. We only saw it after parking in Volterra. LESSON: ALWAYS check your car fully for damage. Anyway – we did try to contact company and couldn’t get anyone on the local number, but were just told to document the damage by their head office, and were told no more. I began to get paranoid, as you often hear horror stories about some rental companies scamming people, and it resulted in me making a complete arse of myself when we returned the car – but more of that in a later blog.

Still mortified that we failed to spot this

We did land in the afternoon, and before going to Lajatico, had a nibble at Volaterra – and, of course, a cheeky Aperol, gelato (from L’Isola del Gusto) and explore.

Anyway, to Lajatico.

We had to park in a sportsground and walk 7 or 8 minutes into town. I papped some sights on the way in.

The ticket ‘office’ was on the way in, and you could either just wander in, or you could buy yourself a neat little pack of some credit stamps for stalls and wooden cutlery, all in a neato mini-tote back that could go about your neck. We all indulged, and were only together for maybe 5 minutes of the first 30 we were there, as we scattered looking for food we’d like. I’d never been in Lajatico at night, and it’s a pretty place – as it is during the daytime.

If I had one complaint, it’s that it was incredibly crowded – in particular at the food stalls. We still managed to get some grub in!

We sat near a well at the bottom of the road, and enjoyed the street entertainment.

We were there for a couple of hours, but then headed home. To chaos. Volterra was celebrating a white night, which meant there were no parking spots to be had. Not at either of our usual residents’ carparks. I had every intention of looking for more places by driving through town, but roadsigns and crowds completely impeded my route down Via Minzoni, and I had to park there, rather illicitly, as there was no way I was reversing all the way back down.

Instead we had a couple of drinks at Volaterra, noted that the concert in the main piazza was a ticket only affair. Everywhere, people were dressed in white, and tons of shops and bars stayed open until the small hours of the morning.

There’s not much more to the week, as we worked most of it. Niamh took one day off to replaster and repaint parts of a damaged outside wall. Check it out in the video near the bottom of this blog. But before that, the week consisted of walks, working and the stuffing of our faces. During one day, we went to Poggibonsi to pick up plaster and paints for Niamh, and stopped in an inoccuous looking restaurant on the side of the road in the industrial outskirts. Inside a lot of the food was based on wine, and was really delicious – Bottega Torciano! Here’s a large collection of photos: