t
Last day in Tuscany/ Today we meandered over to Montalcino passing through some areas we had covered before, but enjoying every minute of it. There was something very charming about its size and though geared towards hosting tourist with their wine industry of their famed Brunella wine, what interested us was what a hometown place it seemed to be. Being here on Sunday, we saw local people talking on the streets, small boys playing soccer like they were in command of the game with their Dad’s on the sidelines (sitting on the stoop of ancient community building) probably thinking about when they were boys.


Then on to Castelnuova dell’ Abate with an entrance too steep and streets to narrow, challenging us to turn away but in a field a quarter of a mile away in a valley was the The Abbey of Sant'Antimo (Abbazia di Sant'Antimo) a beautiful Romanesque church, in a picture-perfect setting .
built in 8oo but remodeled in 1200 where monks continued the tradition of Gregorian chants on a regular schedule, even today. The abbey church was very austere and caused Liane and I to launch into an imaginary description of a Sharp County family that would be proud to boast that their only son had gone to Italy and become an austere monk chanting every week on a regular basis and they would be pleased that he would return on Spring break.

Then back into the car driving up an incredibly steep mountian with switchbacks and hundred mile views (except it was a little overcast and limited the 100 mile view to about 20) , destination: Castiglione d’Orcia .This was another very small walled town with a very large crumbling castle right at the top of the town. We walked all the streets in about 20 minutes. Within a quarter of a mile was an impressive, intact tower on a hill far above the town with a command of the valley. This is Roque de Orcia and can be seen for many miles in any direction since its at about 5000 feet above sea level. The whole place was pretty intriguing and made us wonder what ever in history made this place so valuable that needed that much masonry in a place only accessible by car in the 21 century.

Then back in the car, down the mountain on the other incredible switchback view to a place where hot springs boil out of the ground and people come to take the cure as they have since the Romans ruled. Bagno Vignoni was a very small, small isolated town with tour buses visiting and small hotels catering to people needing baths. Not sure we had seen enough of steaming water coming from the ground we drove on 16 kilometres to another place (Bagno San Philpi) We had read that this place was some kind of miracle of nature, we’ll let you decide based on the photographs whether it deserved the miracle description. For us the five gallon bucked with a large pvc pipe as the source of the miracle seemed strange in a place that uses so much stone for every structure possible. To quote Liane, “ they use marble here like it was plywood” Tomorrow: Rome.