Villa Il Patriarca, Chiusi

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.”  - Rudyard Kipling

 Waving the very grateful and still tipsy cab driver off back to his tavern (and hoping he actually made it there in one piece), we entered the lobby of the Villa. Patriarca is a nobiliary villa which was constructed above the remains of an original ancient Etruscan structure. It has only 22 rooms and is very, very lovely. We were greeted by the desk clerk, Luigi (no!, I thought to myself, that is just too stereotypical), a gracious man who, with limited English made us feel very welcome. As Barry checked us in, I wandered about the lobby, furnished with a piano, beautiful paintings, and gorgeous inlaid ceilings. Luigi told me the history of things as I mused about – a man very proud of his hotel. When I stopped to stare down a floor window in the middle of the lobby, he explained that below were the ruins and that they had been built by the Etruscans 2005 years ago. 

He introduced to us Christian, the man that would take our luggage to our room (which was up four flights of stairs  - no elevator). Christian nodded curtly at us and before I could get out all of “those suitcases are very heavy”, he had hefted one in each hand, clean-jerked them off the floor (he was not a very tall man) and proceeded to run up the stairs. Barry and I crawled up the stairs after him. He opened the door to our room, threw open the drapes and shutters, nodded curtly again and left – all before we could utter one “grazie”. The inside of the villa is lovely but really the more beautiful are the grounds and the surrounding countryside. After hours and hours of travel, Bar and I just listened at the window for a bit. Nothing. A slight burr of cicadas, birdsong, and nothing else. There was the slight odour of burning cedar and poplar – as from a grill, and beyond that a predominant odour of lavender. And lemons.

We took an amble around the grounds. Banks and banks of lavender, lemon trees, a few tangled olive trees, lush Tuscany views of hills and vineyards.

Later that evening we opted for eating dinner in the hotel’s less formal trattoria rather than the more formal restaurant. At a table next to us a local man sat with his newspaper, a whole bottle of wine, and his little dog at his feet. I loved that we saw dogs in restaurants, on trains, on buses, and in bars throughout Europe. We ordered a glass of wine each. The waitress exhibited a little bit of consternation that we were not ordering a whole bottle. After all, I suppose, this nearby gentleman had ordered one all to himself. Barry and I were so travel-whacked at this point that I’m not sure what a whole bottle would have done to us.

The food was home-cooked and so served slowly. The man read his newspaper and drank his wine through five complete courses. Between courses he would take his dog out on to the nearby patio for a pee and have a cigarette. Occasionally he took a phone call. He obviously knew some of the people that came after us as he greeted them with a handshake. Eventually he left, his little dog following obediently behind, a cigarette quickly lit up and hanging from his lip, and his newspaper tucked under his arm. After a delicious meal, and a great deal of travel, Bar and I retired. The next day we were to return to the Chiusi train station to meet our cycling guides.