Rome to Tuscany, May 21 & 22, 2017

Rome to Tuscany, May 21 & 22, 2017

Buongiorno

A nice, uneventful flight from Amsterdam to Rome. There was neither immigration or customs to deal with in Rome AND our luggage made it, always a good sign. And sunshine at last!

Now comes the transition phase from someone to do everything for you on the ship to shifting for yourself ashore. We caught an airport shuttle bus that stops at all the staff parking lots and then the Hilton Garden Inn. By the time we'd checked in and gotten to our room it was nearly 6:30 and time for an early dinner. The TV had several stations in English so we caught up a bit on the news, mostly Trump's trip to the Middle East and scores of soccer matches in UK.

The big challenge was the next morning when we took the shuttle back to the airport and with annotated map in hand set out to find the coffee bar on the arrival of Terminal 3 where the members of the KSU group were to meet. Amazingly enough we found the coffee bar and six of our band. The other four were arriving on a (delayed) flight from Atlanta.

Let me tell you that the arrival terminals are bedlam. Endless streams of people popping out of one door to find hundreds more people to greet them, about half friends and family and half drivers and tour leaders holding up little hand lettered signs saying things like "Vatican Tour", "Bob Jones", and then the cruise lines meeting passengers arriving to board ships in the near by port.

As it so happened, Princess Cruises gathers their flock near that same coffee bar. Jim struck up a conversation with a couple from UK who were taking a Princess cruise from Rome to Singapore. Hundreds of Chinese were being shepherded to that meeting spot, given a bus assignment and then turned over their luggage to a group of burly men who loaded it up on trolleys and (hopefully) delivered it all to the ship. Quite an entertaining spot to people watch.

Eventually Howard, the KSU Professor Emeritus leading our tour, and the other arrived. And eventually our silver bus arrived and eventually we were off to Montepulciano (2-1/2 hours away), a medieval, walled village set high on a hilltop in Tuscany. This is where KSU has a foreign campus located in the old fortezza that guarded the town. And a hilly little burg it is. Quite charming with narrow, winding cobblestone lanes (they're much too narrow to be called streets) with small little shops and restaurants tucked here and there.

We'd been warned that it was hilly and the streets were steep but that is the understatement of the year. You need to be part mountain goat to navigate the place. Some lanes are so steep that there are metal hand rails on the sides of the buildings. We were late getting to our hotel outside the gates, at the bottom of the hill, and thus had about 15 minutes before our first wine tasting in town. One of the women, Beth, uses a cane. Howard took one look at Jim and me and said, "Do you want to take a taxi with Beth to the wine shop?" Uh, oh.

So Howard set off with eight in tow for the 30 minutes it takes to climb the one mile to the Fortezza. The three of us took the ("The" as in only taxi in town) unmetered taxi. Seems it's five euros a piece to ride with him. Whatever. We got to the gate of the Fortezza but didn't see the rest of the group. Jim walked up to see if they were inside but was told the wine tasting room was closed. Uh, oh.
I set off to walk down the main drag (when a car passes by you flatten yourself against one of the buildings that edge the lanes) to the square but didn't find them there either. As I was walking back I heard, "Susan!", turned and saw my Master Gardener friend Amy and her husband Joe. Joe is a professor at KSU and is the school coordinator for the summer which means riding herd over two groups of 45 or so who come for 4-1/2 week sessions. And evidently locating the three of us. We all walked up to the door of the Fortezza. Yes, the wine tasting room was closed but for a special tasting for our group. A little language gap.

KSU occupies the upper floors, a museum is on the ground floor and the wine tasting room is below. The floor is glass. Whenever an historic building is being renovated, Italian law requires that archaeologists be present. The Etruscans were here first so it is not unusual to find evidence but underneath the Fortezza was a mother lode of Etruscan relics and not just shards of pottery but entire columns, cisterns, wells, etc. Needless to say this brought the renovation to a halt. It was determined that all of that couldn't be removed without risking the integrity of the entire Fortezza so the compromise was the glass floor. You look down and see the old and then step out on the medieval terrace and gaze across the now.