Tuscan Wine Country

After our beyond incredible tour to the Coliseum (where we met some great people from the states, Sara and Daniel) we decided to go to lunch together before the next part of our tour.  We took the Metro to the stop we needed then walked around the square (which was really a circle) and found a great looking place for lunch.  Oh my...  we were NOT disappointed.  DELICIOUS pasta dishes.  Diane and I had a gnocchi with red sauce and then a paccheri pasta with squash blossoms.  That pasta was buttery and absolutely to die for.  The gnocchi was creamy and just wonderful, too.




Did I mention that our tour had a part 2??  Well, it did.  Part 2 was to go into the Tuscan country side and visit a winery and have a wine tasting.  We visited Principe Pallavicini Winery just 30 minutes outside of Rome.  We got to go via a fancy tour bus, which was wonderful because all we did in the morning tour was walk, walk, walk!

Nice drive out to the location through green fields and windy roads.  The winery was beautifully set up on a hill and the grounds were quaint and lovely.  Our guide walked us through the finer points of Italian wine making, and walked us through cellars and rooms that held the oak barrels full of precious wine.   After we finished that part of the tour, we had to reload on to our tour bus and drive 5 minutes away to the tasting.  We were privy to taste a lovely, fresh white wine, followed by a medium bodied red, and then their best wine, the Casa Roma red, which was AWESOME, then a dessert wine that actually was not too awfully sweet.  Wonderful tastes, combined with some bread and olive oil and some other treats.

This was definitely a great way to end our day, because the first part of the tour, with the sun shining brightly for most of the time that we were walking, made us hot, sweaty and tired.  So to relax and sit back in a luxury bus, tour cool rooms full of my favorite beverage, and then get to taste fruits of someone else's labors was exactly what the doctor ordered.  We were back by 6:45 p.m.  Diane and I hit one more place before heading home.  We ate cold pizza left over from last night and downed it with a glass of Casa Roma wine.  Then made sure we were all ready for tomorrow, as we have to LEAVE by 6 a.m. to catch our flight back to Nice.
Ciao Roma, it has been a truly unforgettable trip!!