Our final days in Italy were in a beautiful and tiny little town called the Greve (pronounced Gray vÉ) in Chianti. This region in known for their red wine - mama steps was in Heavan! The wine is stamped with a "gallo nero" or Black rooster to distinguish it from other regions of Italy. Now before I dive into the vino talk first I haaaave to describe the amazing location of this town.
We ended up staying at an organic winery up in the hills about a 10 minute walk from town. The views from this place were phenomenal. The rolling hills surrounding around us were full of vineyards, lined with endless rows of grapes as far as the eye could see. It almost didn't seem real. I could tell by the awe-struck look on my mom's face how gorgeous and unbelieveable she found this place. It was like something out of a very sophisticated fairytale.
Us ladies had two hikes planned for our two days in Greve... yeah we made it through about half of one haha. We started off on our first hike with me dragging my ass and a huge lack of motivation (all that bread, wine, and pasta were starting to take its toll on me). Of course the views were magnificent so I pushed myself to go. When we reached a small little castle over-looking the smalll town below we made a short pit-stop to have a little snack and some water. This was a bad idea because then our sense of direction was flipped and our hiking directions set us off in the wrong direction. We probably walked for a solid 30 minutes before giving up and saying "We cannot find this path, we should go back." Once we got back to the castle we looked at the directions again to see if they made more sense... low and behold there was a pathway leading down into the valley beside the castle!! This was the way we were supposed to go. But we were getting tired so we opted to head back to town - which was still a 7km walk round trip.
Next day - Wine tour :)
Now many of the vineyards and wineries are miles from Chianti and without a car we could not reach them. But luckily there was a winery in the town of Chianti, which was only the biggest winery in Italy with over 150 different wines! They had a pretty technical way of setting up their tastings where each guest buys a make-shift "debit card" where you add 10-25 Euros. Then throughout the winery there are stands holding 18 bottles of wine. The stand is divided into two sides with each side controlled by a debit slot. You slip your card in the slot, pick a wine and you can choose if you would like a 1,2, or 3 ounce taste. Each taste or ounce varies in cost depending how much the bottle of wine costs. The once ounce samples ranged from 0.50 to 9.00 Euros! Crazy right! So my mom and I made it through three 10 Euro debit cards - we needed to make sure we liked the wine we were purchasing, so we needed to taste those wines more than once :P Then to make this experience even better they served us two cheese and meat platters to go along with our tasting....Mmmmm! I have never been a huge cheese fan or a salami fan but this sh*t was good!
Then we had to say goodbye to Chianti and we set off for Pienza before ending up in Rome for our last night before our departure back to Canada. Pienza was in yet a different province in Italy called Siena and this area was again beautiful. I thought it was incredible and more magnificent than the Chianti region. This area is worth a Google images search - Pienza. The patchwork crops (similar to home) went on forever with tall cyprus trees distinguishing the driveways in the long open fields. The colours were extremely full, vibrant and rich in nature. Finally we had to catch our last train back to Rome for our last Italian meal and our last gelato (sad panda) - but incredibly delicious!
The final plane ride of this trip around the world felt like the longest flight ever... it did not pass by quickly. We did make it back to Canada safely though with no major setbacks and our baggage! (I was worried on my final flight my bag would get lost). Now it is time for me to settle back into a new reality back home - what a change it will be.
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