A 7:30 wake up suggests that were getting acclimated.   An 11:30 departure for the golden ring of Tuscan goodness suggests that we’re all a little distracted.  For many of the kids, today’s distraction was catching tadpoles from the small water garden by the driveway turnaround.  This involved washing and soaking the labels off empty jam and olive jars, then dunking the jars into the water to grab some of the little wigglers.  A good dunk usually netted three or four tadpoles, and how many people can say they have caught Italian tadpoles?  Ok, how many can say that who weren’t Italian kids?

                

Chris even got into the act by procuring a hammer and nail and poking some holes into the metal tops of the jars so that the tadpoles could breathe.  It was decided that lettuce was an appropriate tadpole food (perhaps radicchio would have been better for Italian tadpoles), but since we have 12 mouths to feed we were stingy with our store-bought lettuce and we did not feel it appropriate to sacrifice Silvia’s container garden lettuce.  So Zoe tore up some dandelion leaves (they have dandelions in Italy, too!) and tossed those in. 

                And…we didn’t get lost!  That is the story of the day.  We pretty much knew where we were all day long.  This was a nice feeling.

                

That’s not to say that everything went exactly as planned.  We were a bit time challenged.  Well, to be more clear, time challenged us.  That is to say, Italian time challenged us.  We went to the first stop on the Ring of Tuscan Goodness, Greve in Chianti, which you might remember from us asking advice there the other day.  We parked, we found the medieval square, the whole time we knew where we were and where we wanted to go.  Jen and I went to the tourist information center off the square  (Chris and Wendy did not want to go in because two days ago they went and asked the lady’s advice and took none of it, even though she gave a full half-hour of advice) looking for directions to a short hike that Silvia recommended to us.  We even found out where there was a public toilet. 

 Ok, a minor hiccup after that.  There are two banks on the square and I turned off at the wrong one on our first attempt to start the hike.  However, after that we went up the hill to a medieval Borgo, which is like a village, and it was all very nice.  Although the lady suggested a nice loop that would have brought us to a few more villages and extended our trek a kilometer or two, it was very possible that she knew we were with the Brookses and wanted to stick it to us.  So we hiked back down the mountain looking for lunch. 

Here is where Italian time challenged us.  Our tradition is to source various lunch components and have a picnic somewhere.    Every shop we wanted to get stuff from — the forno, the fromaggeria, even the take-away pizzeria– were closed up.  The daily pause.  Italy’s siesta.  Not much happens between 1 pm and 4:30.  At least not much bread and cheese are sold. 

This was problematic because we were all very hungry.  Luckily, we found a restaurant that was not pausing and was able to seat 12. It was a good meal, but we still like our picnics. 

After this scare, we decided that we should skip most of the rest of the Ring of Goodness.  It was mostly old Italian stuff, anyway.  The one other stop on the tour we did make was at an old castle town – Castellina – which boasted what was described to us as the best gelato in the world.  Reviews were very favorable. 

Thus sustained, we were able to withstand the rest of the ride and a substantial wait until our dinner – home-made lasagna with fresh lasagna noodles – was ready.