Italy: Day 5, Part 1 - San Gimignano

By this point, surely you know that I am adding to what I wrote in my journal. This post will have more post-trip inserts than any before it. You'll see why. 

As I mentioned, May 1st is Italy's Labor Day so most of Florence was shut down. In order to get the most out of our visit, the tour scheduled us to go to nearby San Gimignano on Labor Day and then tour a vineyard and hit up Florence when it opened partially back up for night.

I knew nothing about San G.before we got to Italy. In fact, I'm not sure that it was on our itinerary. That being said, I'm okay with surprises. Really. Okay, I'm not, but this one turned out just fine. I'm working on being more go with the flow. But I refuse to stop making lists.

Anyway.

While in San G., I learned only a few things. I'll share them as I get there. Everything else, I credit to Wikipedia.

So we left Florence because it was pretty much shut down for the day. Since San G. depends on the tourist trade for just about everything, they did not shut down. In fact, they had a great big party and invited the world. We got there as soon as the gates were opened that morning.

*San G. is a completely walled town. Like completely walled in. With gates and watch towers. Ain't nobody getting in there without permission.

Us outside the gate. You can see the wall and one tower.

When we got to the city-center, we were met with a marching band. Just for us. Not really, but that's how it seemed since there weren't a lot of tourists there yet. Seriously, we were there about 8:30.

We walked around and got lost for a bit. San G. is a charming little town. There's really no way to get lost since it is walled in, but we tried our best. Oh, and to use the bathroom, we had to pay. Like 75 cents. But. The bathroom was cleaned after each use AND it was the cheapest public bathroom for the whole of our trip. I paid $1.37 to use the bathroom at the train station.

And then. We climbed. It seems that all Italian cities have a highest point that must be climbed and seen. And mostly paid for. Yeah, they charged us to climb a whole bunch of steps. For the most part, it was worth it. In San G. the highest point is a tower called Torre Grossa which is about 175 feet high.

The stairs...

Speaking of worth it, let's talk about the views. Or let's not. How about pictures instead? I'll make them real big (even though I know it makes the post look messy).

Looking into the town center from the tower

I know. Amazing.

After the tower, we got gelati and did some window shopping. I bought Mar a scarf there. And we bought some wine for the label. The label has a silhouette of the tower. San G. is famous for their white wine, wild boar, and goat cheese. We did get sandwiches with the boar, but I wasn't a huge fan. Matt liked it though.

We left the town at noon, just as the clouds opened and it started pouring rain. On our way back to Florence, we went to a winery for wine tasting and olive oil sampling. When I say tasting, I should have said that we drank at least two glasses of wine each, plus a dessert wine. I wish I could remember the name of the winery. We tried the Chianti Classico, the Chianti Classico Reserve, and the dessert wine. I figured, I had to drink some red wine while in Tuscany. I mean, it's Tuscany. I'm normally not a big red wine drinker though. It warmed me up after the rainstorm that's for sure.

Then we went on a quick tour of the vineyard and winery. In the spitting rain. In the picture below, I'm standing next to a wine barrel that holds 7,200 liters of wine.  That's basically a swimming pool.

And then, my favorite part of the winery. This picture. The poppies and the grapes. Not really grapes because it wasn't harvest time, but you can see the vines and the rows. Love.

Next up: Florence for dinner. That's right, a whole post about food.