Agriturismo Bonello

Lunching at Bagno Vignoni

We are loving our first agriturismo experience. Thursday was Italian Labor Day, so we booked it out of soggy Rome to the Tuscan countryside. It's our third of four days here at Agriturismo Bonello, a delightful hilltop farmhouse 5km west of Pienza. The accommodations are excellent, the views gorgeous, the weather a tad cold but still enjoyable, the staff quite friendly. But the best factor by far is the food! Oh, those Italian dinners: 10 courses, 3 hours. It calls to mind the days before Internet, before even television, when the company you kept was your evening's entertainment. The trick, of course, is to start slow on the bruschette and zuppa so you have plenty of room when those secondi piatti come around. So far I, of course, have failed miserably at pacing myself, finishing both of my dinners nearly too stuffed to waddle home. We even tried grappa! Though it was a bit too stiff for our liking.

Getting here was an adventure. Seems like every time we travel, we arrive at the train station with the customary "what now?!" looks on our faces. Most of the time a short taxi or bus ride gets us to our destination. But on Thursday we arrived after sundown at the Chiusi station with 60km between us and our destination. And, naturally, the buses don't run on Italian Labor Day. One expensive cab ride later, we arrived just in time for our first amazing agri-supper.

Bah. 

Friday was a lovely, relaxing day. We took out mountain bikes and rode 8km down to Bagno Vignoni, an even smaller village and one of Tuscany's best-kept secrets (Shiver: I felt like Rick Steves when I wrote that last sentence.) The town is built on a hot spring, and the water runs from the main square into hotel pools, through canals and over manmade waterfalls. It's extraordinary. We had a wonderful lunch there (lasagna, ribolita, wurstel), found a quaint bookstore, and bought swimming caps so we could play in the hotel pool. Fun fun fun.

It's a tad colder today. We're about to walk to Pienza for lunch. Don't worry, we brought a frisbee. Back to Rome tomorrow, after a quick stopover in Siena. Then it's back to the grind. But until then, we'll be taking it easy.

P.S. We've been following the election closely. But we're both thankful that we don't have to put up with the U.S. media. It's such a different perspective seeing things through a European lens.