We arose this morning ready to take on the Tuscan wilderness in our car. The day dawned magnificent. By 10 am we were on the road. Hey, this IS Italy. We ventured to three nearby towns, Montalcino, Pienza and San Quirico d’Orcia. On the way back from the last town we only made one wrong turn. We were heading south rather than the desired north. Our philosophy is now that all roads in Italy head somewhere, so let’s pretend that is where we wanted to go. We pretended and drove through some beautiful countryside on sparsely traveled two-lane winding roads.

For lunch in Montalcino Dear Ann wanted me to try a roasted pork sandwich which Italians get from the sausage/dried/cured meats shop. It sounded good to me. The meat was carved off the huge body of roasted pig with spices inside the roast. Now, what I got was a pork sandwich with nothing, I repeat, nothing, on it. Just pork and bread (good foccacia bread, I must admit). From what I understand the “skid grease” as my father called it, ie, butter, mayo etc. anything to help the bread and all go down properly was in this case the pork fat. There is a lot of “skid grease" here. Another word for pork fat is, you guessed it, lard, or lardo in Italian. After a couple of bites of this lardo sandwich with some porchetta (pork), I was done.

We went to the Super Mercado today. I would call this a Safeway. Just to make shopping for groceries a tad more interesting, the store closes at 1 pm and does not open again until 4 pm. When did we wish to shop? 2 pm. That was not a problem though since we could not find one. Anywhere. We knew they existed but even if we knew the street address it would not have helped. Remember the no street sign "rule" in Italy? After wandering in the car basically aimlessly we literally stumbled on one on the outskirts of Montepulciano. It was 4 pm. Lucky for us it took two hours to find one because now it was opening time. We shopped like our lives depended on it. We bought produce, bread, meat, wine, milk, hot red peppers for spicing stuff up and pasta. We were loaded and spent less than the previous night’s dinner. Ann commented on the low prices for food here. That made me happy since Euros were flying out of our hand like, um, dollars do.

I went to the internet café this evening before dinner; the only internet café in the entire town. I spent $2.40 for 20 minutes of time on my own computer. To make this robbery worse the café is at the bottom of the town by the main gate. We live up at the top of the hill (Read: Mountain) by the old fortress. I admit I am a wimp but this hill is a cardiac workout coming back and I prefer escalators.

Lesson for Day 14: A lardo sandwich in beautiful Tuscany tastes just like a lard sandwich would in the US.