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When we walked into Borgo Buio (http://www.borgobuio.it) for lunch in Montepulciano…we had no idea we were in one of the best restaurants in all of Italy…according to the owner Pier! Today we are focusing on the town of Montepulciano which is a very well-known name around the world…specifically for it’s vino.
Lunch definitely wasn’t fat-free. We ordered the homemade pastas, one with a truffle cream sauce and the other with a bolognese sauce. We were happily scarfing down our food and enjoying the cave like interior of the restaurant when a big Italian man sat down at a table nearby and started talking to us.
It was Pier, the owner and he was extremely friendly…chatting with us while we ate, and then insisting we follow him to the kitchen to meet his wife whom took a picture with us. After our delicious lunch and meeting of the family we walked around town which was filled with little wine shops selling the local wine…vino nobile. As we walked around and up the hills to each shop, we realized Montepulciano was high on the mountain and had beautiful views from all sides of town.
We toured the wine cellar of Cantina Contucci (http://www.contucci.it). We walked through their old barrels and tanks on our own, and tasted the family wine…we purchased one bottle which we both really liked.
We visited a couple other wine shops, asking questions and tasting our way through town. We bought wine from Poliziano (http://www.carlettipoliziano.com) and Gattavecchi (http://www.gattavecchi.it) and had fun seeing some of the other caves with extremely old huge barrels.
After our wine and food journey through town we drove towards Pienza stopping first at a small hilltop town full of residential homes and one small square with a church. Pienza was enclosed by a fortress wall so we parked outside in the parking lot.
As soon as we were through the archway and walking down the cobblestone street, we saw a small leather shop with a man hard at work engraving one of his leather goods. We walked in and saw a small leather-bound book with a beautiful countryside scene burned by hand into the leather. Included in the price, he engraved the back with our names, our website and the year. This book will be where we keep important notes from this trip.
Pienza was nice…we took pictures of the familiar clock tower, and church in the main square, and walked through some of the many boutiques before going back to our place in Monte San Savino.
We got take out from the pizza place we had the other night but were a little disappointed…they are much better hot out of the oven.
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Published by Giff Kabat
I grew up in Ohio as a kid, so of course I went to college at “THE” Ohio State University. I graduated in 2001 with a major in business finance. A month after graduation, I moved out to California with my college girlfriend (whom I married in 2005)…and started my career in sales (industrial sales for 5 years…then moved into medical laser sales for 4 years).
In 2009 I was 31 years old. I had a great job, a new house, and a beautiful wife. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better…my wife and I found out we were going to have a baby. Everything was going according to plan…and I couldn’t have scripted a better life for myself.
Then in the same year…everything changed. My wife, Brandey, called me when I was on my way to work and told me over the phone, something I never thought could be possible in a million years. My beautiful 30-year old pregnant wife was just told that she had breast cancer. At that moment, everything stopped all at once. I immediately went to her…and learned of our new plan…which began with her needing surgery immediately…and the rest we would find out later.
The day we returned from the hospital after Brandey’s surgery…my father died. He had been battling an aggressive cancer of his own…and although he was the one person I wanted to speak with about Brandey having cancer…I never told him. My sister, Brooke, had just gotten married a few months ago, and although he was weak, he was able to walk his little girl down the aisle of her wedding. On the night before my sister’s wedding, Brandey and I told him that we were pregnant and about to make him a grandfather. It made no sense to tell him that everything had changed for us…so he died in peace knowing everything was “the way it should be” for his only 2 children.
2010 was the worst year of my life. We had lost our baby…and for 12 months I watched my wife fight cancer with multiple surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation treatments, and drug therapy. It was a difficult year for us…but we made it. When you go through something like this in life, you learn a lot about yourself and the people around you. I was amazed at the strength and courage of my wife…and how many good people there are in this world. I will be forever grateful for the ones who never ceased to amaze me with their kindness during this hard time. Family, friends, and sometimes complete strangers…helped us make it through this. I am, and will always be especially grateful to my mother, who was with my dad at the very end, when I couldn’t be there, and when things were at their worst. She has been so supportive throughout all of this, and without her everything would have been so much harder for me.
It’s 2011 now…and the plan we have for our life this year…is to make it the best year of our lives. Brandey is officially in remission from breast cancer and she has a 95% chance the cancer will never come back. Besides the love that I have for my wife and family, the loves of my life are food, wine, and adventure travel. My wife and I love traveling to new places, seeing natural wonders, and meeting new people from different parts of the world. So for the next 400 days…we’ve decided to travel the world…and celebrate our lives. There are so many things I took for granted in life that I will never take for granted again. My father worked for over 30 years at the same job with the same company…rarely took time off…and died at 64 years old right after his retirement. For me, this trip is a combination of a tribute to him, along with wanting to spend the time of my life with the “love of my life.”
* The only thing I will miss while we are gone is our family and friends (who we hope will meet us somewhere throughout our trip) and especially our 3 little kitties we left with my mom in Ohio to catsit for the next 400 days. I will also miss watching “American Football” over the weekend…but I’ll do my best to check the scores in the middle of the night.
GIFF
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