Afternoon in Massa Marittima
Easter Monday, or Pasquetta, is another day off here in Italy. The tiny grocery store near my AirBnB in Roccastrada was closed, so I thought I’d head to a nearby bigger town to find provisions, more open restaurants and tour around.
Massa Marittima is 22 miles as the crow flies from Roccastrada but it takes 40 minutes to get there; everything seems like that in Tuscany because of the winding roads up and down hills, trucks you get stuck behind, little villages with cow crossing signs you pass through.
I arrived midday and everyone was out in the piazza, still celebrating Easter. You could tell there were tourists due to the photo taking and gawking around, but I wasn’t hearing English so presumably these were Italians on a quick getaway for the long weekend. I made my way to Enoteca Il Bacchino after quickly checking out the San Cerbone church which was mostly cool to me because it is oriented on a diagonal in the big square, with giant Greek temple type steps up to it.
Madgy, the owner of Enoteca Il Bacchino and his wife were super nice and set me up with my 462nd cured meat and cheese spread and a glass of Vermentino.
There was another goddamn tower and I climbed it. This one truly had vertical stairs like the angle of a rope ladder hanging out of a treehouse. Just straight up and down. My raised-by-lawyers is very amplified over here - there are LIABILITIES at every turn! I shudder.
But I could see the island of Elba in the water out over the Maremma and that was worth it.
