The types of crops changed from field crops like barley to grapes. Lots and lots of grapes. This area is known as the Noble Wine Region.
Montepulciano is spread out along a high ridge line and enclosed with high walls. They had parking and a tourist information area just by gate that made it convenient. One more sign that Montepulciano has thought about tourism marketing is the existence of not only good signage in the city but a lot of QR codes on the signs that link to further information. They even supply an open and fast Wifi connection! Brilliant.
There is the requisite window shopping but here there are a lot of food and wine related stores. Everyone had a free tasting.
We walked around Montepulciano and took in the sights. There are some great views of the countryside. Grape vines everywhere.
We next headed toward the town of Montalcino. It is located about 30 min west of Montepulciano. As it was after noon we stopped for lunch in San Qauirico d'Orcia. This is a great little to town that feels more "authentic" for some reason. It is not overrun with tourists but has some good shops and we had a great lunch. The parking was even free!
When we got to Montalcino I missed the sign for the first parking lot and we found ourselves immediately into the narrow and steep streets of the town. We crept through it and got out to the other side where there was also a parking lot.
However it had a pay and display machine that only took coins and we didn't have any. I tired to talk to the parking ticket person who was making her rounds and she suggested we go somewhere and buy something to get change otherwise we'd get a ticket. So in doing that we found ourselves back in the old town trying to find a store that was open (and a place we could stop) and ended up on some scary steep and narrow places ... one of which we had to back uphill for a couple of hundred meters to get out of. As by now we had seen much if the town from the car (unintentionally) we decided to abandon our efforts to find change and get parked and we left the way we came.
We did get some wine tasteing in at a couple if wineries, the best of which was Conti Constanti. We bought a bottle of Brunello that was very, very nice.
It was back to our villa il Fornacino for some drinks around the pool before we headed off to supper with the wedding party. It was held at the Lazy Olive where our cooking class had been.
It was a great evening and we watched the sun go down on our last night in Tuscany. It will be packing and cleanup for our long trip back to the the airport in Milan in the morning.
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