We got a late start on Friday, after the late opera ending and then the later dinner in the Piazza Bra, and to complicate matters, on the walk back from the arena, my walking shoes finally lost their sole. So it was about 11:00 AM before we finally got out of Verona, just ahead of the end of the grace period for the ZTE for overnight stays.
Our destination was Orbetello, which is about 240 miles due south of Verona, or about 300 miles if you go through Parma and out to the coast at La Spezia, at the southern end of the Cinque Terre.
We took the latter route so we could get a better look at the Parma region of Emilia-Romagna, and then follow the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea all the way to Orbetello. Conveniently, that route took us through the village of Busseto, just outside of which is Sant'Agata and the home of Giuseppi Verdi, composer of Aida (which we saw last night) and also of Rigoletto, which we would be seeing in a couple of weeks. As a young man he fell in love with a singer, Giuseppina, who was older than he. They did not marry during his struggling early years. Years later he built a fine home at Sant'Agata, but for twenty years they still shunned him and especially Giuseppina, for "living in sin". He did not tell them when he and Giuseppina got married secretly after ten years, but he did tell them after the next ten years had passed and they knew that that had wronged a married woman out of ignorance. And by now she was a wealthy woman married to a famous composer!
From Busseto we got on the highway to the coast. The highway rest areas in Italy are marvellous! They have all sorts of real food, including fresh breads and produce, local cheeses and wines, salumi. In the better ones, you can get fresh hot plates of pastas, risottos, and grilled items, and pre-wrapped sandwiches or fresh ones made to order. In one of them I saw burgers made with local Chianina beef! The wines are of all grades, and I even saw some Barolos for €9.99. I guess even the best winemakers need someplace to sell the bottom of the barrel.
The highway is broad and well-maintained, with good guardrails, markings, and signage, and usually good breakdown lanes. People were pretty good about keeping to the right unless passing so it was a pleasant drive through increasingly hilly and then mountainous terrain. At first we saw a few isolated hilltop towns, often with only one or two roads leading to them. Closer to the sea it was more rugged and rural, with smaller settlements in valleys beside large streams that looked good for trout fishing. Eventually we came of the mountains at La Spezia and turned south toward Orbetello and Rome.
The ride down the coast was frankly pretty boring. The highway was just a little too far from the sea to get any good vistas, although we did get some good scenery of the mountains to our left. We were to stay that night at Azienda LaSelva, a farmhouse that's part of a thriving family-run international organic foods company. I'd gotten an email last night that the check-in person had to leave by 5:00 PM, but that there was self-check-in available. I wanted to ask questions, so we made tracks and bypassed Pisa and Grossetto to arrive by 4:30.
We got checked in, I got all my questions answered (like where to buy shoes to replace my sole-less ones), and we had time to explore the market downstairs, which was full of their fresh produce and also their canned and frozen products. It all looked high-quality to I took a catalog.
Then we headed into Orbetello for shoes and dinner. Orbetello is in a peculiar seaside geography as you can see in this map. It's a skinny town surrounded by two large lagoons that have resident flamingoes during some times of the year. On the far side is an "island" with two port towns full of yachts and yacht people, but Orbetello is now the more family-friendly area, and the more sensible place to buy sensible shoes!
The shoe-buying part was quick and easy. We went into a shoe-world kind of box store in a strip mall on the way into town. There were virtually no employees to provide help, but I figured it out and was back to the car with new shoes in 15 minutes. I still wear them to work!
In the old town we explored the streets and finally got some dinner in a charming place called Trattoria da Rugantino with Roman Trastevere-style cuisine (Trastevere is a quiet Roman neighborhood known for students and artists, just across the Tiber from the most popular sites, and walking distance to the Vatican). Da Rugantino is a small place with a quiet back garden that's obviously under the supervision of a big black tomcat who prowled the walls keeping disturbances away. The server was excellent, especially at fielding questions from Lorna and Melissa about their various dietary preferences; he knew the dishes well, not just the descriptions from the kitchen but how they are made. That was very good because we'd had a long day from Verona and we were really hungry.
We were not disappointed! We couldn't stop. We had the Roman classic pasta cacio e pepe, orata (Sea Bream, shown here), ravioli with a fresh cod-bream filling, ciccoria (sauteed chicory), and a mighty artichoke alla romana. All of that was accompanied by an Orvieto Classico, a dry white wine that is not hard to find in New England. Orvieto, one of our favorite places in all of Italy, is not terribly far from Orbetello, inland on the other side of Lake Bolseno.
After that we were too sated for dessert, so we walked back to the car and returned to the farmhouse, where we slept very soundly indeed!