Day 6 - Montepulciano and Greve-in-Chianti

Got up around 8 to a beautiful valley with rolling hills in the background with the sun just slightly hidden by the cyprus and palmegranate trees in the garden. We packed the car and headed the kilometer or so into Montepulciano for breakie and to hit the internet cafe. We left town adn hit the road north for Greve-in-Chianti at around 11am. Faye drove, which stressed me out abit because she can't read the signs, so i'm expected to read them adn tell her where to go, and this usually involves making very quick turns, so its very tough. There are two options with driving 1) she drives, i navigate; or 2) I drive, I navigate.
So anyways, we spent most of the day in the car except for a few small stops. We went from Montepulciano to Pienza (another fortress type town with a characteristic square in teh middle of town with a huge church and a water well). Pienza used to be home to one of the Popes (Papa in Italian; i heard the name Pope Pius the ? kicking around somewhere) and his home was along one side of the square, but of course, we got there during 'siesta' time, so we couldn't take the tour. Italians really have their shit together. They don't open business until 'at least' 9am, then close from somewhere between noon or 1, until somewhere between 2 and 3:30. Sucks for tourists, but great for them.
We brought a lunch of meats, cheese, and rolls during which (sorry for telling this story Faye, but come on, it was pretty funny) a pigeon shit from above us and it landed right in Faye's olives. Not the end of the world. So we threw them out and moved camp over five feet, when all of a sudden I saw a feather drop right in front of me, so I looked up and saw that the pigeon from earlier had now moved over 5 feet as well. Then, in slow motion, I saw him shit again, from about 20 ft up, directly above Faye, accelerating at 9.8m/s^2. I just started to yell as it was dropping and then landed on her directly. Needless to say, she was not all that impressed and when she gets home and reads this, she'll probably want to kill me.
After getting Faye cleaned up, we hit the road west and stoped in Bagno Vignoni, a place with naturally heated baths. Apparently the Romans felt that the baths had some kind of soothing or healing abilities and so Roman Emperors and Popes used to come bathe there. It was pretty cool and we bathed our feet for awhile in one of the baths further down the valley. We were only there about an hour adn then headed north through Buonconvento and then through Sienna. Sienna is ANOTHER fortress type town and then driving/navigating got slightly crossed up here and instead of going 'around' Sienna, we went straight through the middle. Literally. The crazy thing about these fortress towns like Sienna, Montepulciano, and Orvieto is that they mostly go straight up at a very steep angle to the piazza in the middle and then back again. The problem with driving through though is that they were built over 1000 years ago, so the streets are usually not much more than 10 feet across. So fast forward to 2005, and add cars (because there usually aren't any restrictions or laws about driving into town....very weird) adn then add hundreds of tourists. So me and Faye went right into Sienna (not on purpose), driving up, with no room to turn around, hundreds of tourists roaming around, and on top of that, driving a standard up a very very steep hill (think Jacobs' Hill in IF, if you've ever been there). It was stressful, but we made it through fine.
From Orvieto to Montepulciano the day before, the ride was very nice becuase of all of the hills and the characteristic Tuscan style rolling hills, but the drive from Montepulciano to Sienna, on the other hand, didn't seem as nice with everything seemeing more arid or something...not sure what it was, just not as nice. This country is crazy though, because all of a sudden, north of Sienna, everything was gorgeous. WE were now into the Chianti region (very famous for vino) and everything was all of a sudden way more lush. The views from the hilltops were insane and we didn't go for more than 5 minutes without seeing big fat grapes hanging from vines.
We finally rolled into Greve-in-Chianti around 5 o'clock and the only room we could get looked over the main square (which was gorgeous), but at a cost of 90 Euro a night. Again, there was no freaking internet places here, so i haven't had the chance to update my blog since Sunday or Monday).
We found a place for dinner in teh square and split 1.5 L of local rossa vino and ate. I was pretty trashed after the vino and made the mistake of trying to call mom and dad after dinner and probably scared them (let's blame it on Faye being a bad influence).
After a dinner of locally raised chicken and rabbits for me, Faye went up to bed/passed out and i stuck around and talked abit with one of the guys working in the restaurant. Soon enough it wasw decided that i was going to go out with him and his buddies that night, i just had to wait for him to close up so that's when i claled home all drunk and then told mom that i had to go and get even drunker with some local guy (sorry again mom).
So anyways, he took me acros town to some local bar where a bunch of his friends, who also work in the service industry in the area, met up with us. Three of the guys, including the guy i went with, Saed (like on the show Lost), were Morrocans living and working in Italy. So we had a bunch of beers, Budweiser of all the beers in the world. They thought it was crazy that i live somewhere where it snows all the time and thought it was awesome that i play ice hockey. After a few beers, they invited me back to their place to smoke hashish, at which point i kindly said bonne sera and stumbled back to the hotel somehow and went to bed.