Day 10: San Quirico d’Orcia

The sun is out and shining brightly this morning…..it is Liberation Day, the holiday commemorating when the Allies liberated Italy from the Germans.

There are many parades and ceremonies honoring the anti-Fascist partisans who resisted the Germans. It is a bank holiday and offices and some stores are closed but Italians take the opportunity for day trips and restaurants and cafes are usually very busy.

I take my usual morning walk around the town…enjoying it much more today because of the fine weather. I pass by a group from one of the “contradas” (neighborhoods) practicing their drumming and flag throwing for an upcoming festival.

And the streets are much more lively this morning as tourists–both Italian and foreigners–are already in town for the holiday.

I buy some “cornetti” (pastries) for breakfast at one of the local bakeries and it is so nice that we eat our breakfast outside in the garden…..our first chance of the trip to do that. At least, I eat–Diana is not feeling too well this morning…she may have picked up a stomach virus so she takes it easy.

After breakfast, we drive on the back roads to Buonconvento which has been described as a “hill town without a hill”. The approach to town takes you past an industrial zone but once you park in the big lot and walk through the high town wall, you are in a pretty “centro storico”.

We take a leisurely stroll up and down the main street along with lots of other holiday visitors and plan to return to visit the art museum on another day.

We continue our “Sunday drive” through the ever-beautiful and green countryside to the small, pretty village of Murlo, an old Etruscan town. We arrive close to 1 pm so most everything in the town is closed but we make the 5 minute circuit of town. In fact, the tourist office is open and we have a nice conversation (in English) with the gentleman in charge.

We continue our country drive across another picturesque ”strada bianca” (a usually unpaved road–that can range from an almost unpassable muddy track to a well maintained gravel surface–that is marked in white on the map)

towards the larger market town of Asciano. We stop and have a gelato for lunch and sit in the main square

before heading back to San Quirico d’Orcia.

Diana is not feeling quite right (she attributes it to too much steak) and takes a nap while I catch up with some work and take a few walks around town for the rest of the afternoon; there are still quite a few visitors in town.

I eat a light dinner in the apartment–bread, cheese, salad–while Diana tries to sleep off her whatever it is that ails her.

Tomorrow we are meeting internet friends (whom we have never met in person) for lunch in Civitella Marittima, a town about an hour away in the Alta Maremma, which is the hill country just above the Mediterranean in southwestern Tuscany.