Wild Boar is not boring.

(From Saturday morning)

Greetings from under the Tuscan sun. I’m not sure how this happened. I’m not sure how I got here. But at present I’m sitting outside on the terrace of our apartment looking at the hills of Tuscany. It’s so European.

Liza printed off directions to our place outside of Montalcino at work yesterday. They were two pages long (one page was just getting us outside of Rome), and….in Italian. I’m not sure how she thought that would be helpful, but somehow we managed. We were having a lovely (and surprisingly successful) drive through the countryside, when the managers of the hotel called to say they closed reception at 8, and it was 7:58. This information would probably have best been served in one of the many emails exchanged, but regardless, having an old Italian woman yell at you (still not sure if she was yelling or if it was just the language) puts a bit of a fire in your belly, so we spent the last 45 minutes of the drive stressing about getting there as quickly and efficiently as possible…which, surprisingly, considering our track record, we did. And we were soothed by the beauty of the Tuscan sunset. I think I’ve already used the terms awesometastic, awesome, amazing and amazeballs enough to describe this trip, so let’s try a new one: this place is terrifitasticly fabulicious.

The farm where we’re staying, La Crociana, is about 3 km south of Montalcino, the home of the world famous Brunello wine.  It’s one of the many agritourism spots in this region where visitors stay at a working farm. When we pulled up, Liza said “of course we’re staying at the one with the neon sign,” but it turned out the neon sign was for the neighboring restaurant, which sources most of it’s ingredients from the farm. After we’d dealt with our upset (but not really upset owners), we sat down for dinner there, and it was fantastic. For appetizer we did an olive oil tasting of three oils from the region, followed by a pasta with Tuscan ragout (you know, when in Tuscany…), and a wild boar braised in Brunello. For the finale, a tasting of three pecorino cheeses, which also come from this region, and also happens to be my favorite cheese. If it had been appropriate to do so, I would have screamed, “THIS IS SO FUCKING AWESOME!!!!” I restrained myself.

After dinner, Liza and I sat out on our terrace for a couple hours enjoying some more red wine, and staring at a blindingly bright moon. We decided, among other things, that the more words you have to use to describe a place, the better it is. For example:

“We’re going to Barcelona.” – cool

“We’re going to a farm house in Tuscany, just south of Montalcino, to go wine tasting” – dreamy

I’ve never woken up so excited as I have today, throwing the shutters open, making espresso, whistling with delight and yelling “Buon Giorno Toscana” to the quiet rolling hills.  Eat my shit, Francis Mayes.