Isabella is the Exclusive Resorts concierge. This is how she pronounces it: Is-ah-BEY-a-la. I respect anyone who can add that many syllables into their name. You may now call me Aaaa-sh-oooo-ley-eeeee.
The way I get to know a place is by taking pictures and eating. So here is my log:
Photos:
Got to the house, it was beautiful. Ran outside to take pictures. We are on a hilltop, as all houses seem to be here. There is not much around us, at least not any buildings, but an endless array of textures. The olive trees on the hill are grey and look like a smoky mist. Giant swaths of every shade of green, fat hairy bees working on the purple flowers of the rosemary that lines the property. Decaying wood, crumbling stone. The sun started to fall behind the hills and the sky lit orange and yellow. I spent some time on the age old photographer's dilemma or bright sky, dark foreground, and as always, stuck to my fixed 20mm lens to help me get the "big picture".
Food:
Wine from the estate on which we are staying and a platter or cured meats and cheeses were waiting for us, which we ate, no as not to insult them. Then off to some tiny (piccolino) hilltop walled town made of crumbling stone, where we walked down the tiny narrow street to a tiny crumbling stone ristorante. It couldn't have been more perfect. Into this little cave with the arched stone ceiling we sat for our first proper meal in Tuscany. We were the only people in the restaurant, and I got the distinct impression that we were the only people awake in the entire town. I was pretty sure that if the restaurant owner and his family didn't know we were coming, their would be tucked away in their crubling stone house with quaint shutters too. We shared "aubergine parmigana" which was superior to and nothing like the "eggplant parm" back home, and I had a comforting spaghetti bolognese (that's spag bol to you, S & J) and it did the trick, along with a bottle of Chianti. Perfecto.
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