Day four. Sunday

Woke to an amazing sunrise coming through the red curtains. Maybe tomorrow we will  open them and watch.  It's 8 am. Shower and dress and check Facebook to get a message from Mike. He was just going to bed. He said good night I said good morning... Breakfast of a coffee and croissant with cherry jam..yummy. Today we are doing the ! The four magical villages. They are all up in the hills. Will post pictures .  One town we stopped and had a coffee that was the best coffee I have had in my life. I will never forget it. We stopped  for lunch at the last one. I had vegetable and bean soup with onions which they bring raw on a side plate. Then I ordered maccharoni which came as flat long pasta with a fresh tomato sauce . It was amazing. Paul had mushroom soup and a dish of wild Boar. Delores had ravioli with a weird sauce and Bob ordered a plate of different cheeses and a duck dish. We bought a bottle of their house wine to bring home. It's now 4:15 and we are back at villa deciding what to do about food for dinner. No stores open. Hmmmmm

Light dinner of pasta el pesto with sliced tomatoes and salad. And wine, followed by a game of Skip Bo.

The four villages are all small hill towns where you park outside the original walls and then walk up to the narrow streets. Everything is clean and picturesque, can take a million pictures:
Petroio - we drove through the tiny cobbled streets of this town.
Castelmzuio - part of The English Patient was filmed here. The cafe we had that terrific coffee from, Locanda di Casa Mustia, was down in a half basement, half full of people including the local priest who apparently likes to fuel up before delivering his service. We saw him 20 minutes later with a broom and dustpan.

Montisi - a small town consisting of a million photo opportunities.

Trequanda - We parked and then started walking up the hill. We were looking for the restaurant Conte Matte that had been recommended to us. In a rare departure from his usual behaviour Paul asked for directions ... there were three people chatting and with a 'scusco' and the name 'Conte Matte' one of the party excused himself from the conversation and started walking us up the hill to the restaurant, very quickly. He was happy to take us to the other side of town, the conversation was pretty much Italian and one-sided until he learned that we were Canadian and between us we had a few words of French.  What a wonderful welcome to this tiny village.