Hike from Pienza

After soaking in the hot springs we headed to Pienza for a hike in the countryside to a small chapel and by some Gladiator filming locations! I have never seen the movie and honestly didn’t even know what would have been filmed there, but Raymond explained it to me. The walk started in the city and we took this path down that had all of these artistic benches which was kind of fun. Then it goes out into the hills and there was a section of long grasses and there were lots of people in them taking photos and I was like what is going on?!? So then Raymond found a short clip from Gladiator where he is dreaming of running his hand through the wheat by his home and I was like oh! This is what they are doing! Like me and Twilight yesterday! I asked Raymond if he wanted to recreate it, but he did not, so I was like well someone has to! So he played cameraman and got some photos/video to make our own Gladiator scenes running my hand through the grass. I did not know we would be doing another movie today! Now it makes me thing what else was filmed here that we can recreate? After the video is the house that was his house in the movie and it was a pretty nice walk. Pienza overlooks it all which I enjoyed.

Then the trail goes up to a small chapel that you can also drive down the dirt road to get to and it was super busy! I don’t really know why as it was not really that special, but people loved it so good for them. Then we looped back around to Pienza and got some gelato at the same chain we got it from yesterday in Montepulciano (they have three locations in these tiny towns). I loved the strawberry rosemary so much I wanted more, but this one also had lemon Basil so I thought I would give that a try as well. It was risky as I don’t really love lemon, and I was hoping he would give me move strawberry, but it was mostly the lemon Basil. Once I tried it I was so glad I had more of it! If we were to go back there again I would have just gotten the lemon Basil it was so good. And so refreshing after our hot hike up to town!

The hike overall was pretty nice. All out in the sun, but luckily it wasn’t that hot and it was incredibly windy for the most part and the wind was cool so we didn’t get too too hot. The last bit up was not as windy so the gelato helped cool us off after the sweaty climb. When we got to the gelato shop there was no one there so we ordered and walked across the street to sit on a bench and enjoy and by the time we turned back to the shop there was a line out the door! And it was like that the whole time we were sitting there! We got there at just the right time!

We also saw lots of rain in the distance, but luckily it never got to us. On our hike there were some spots that looked so dark and stormy and I thought for sure we would get rained in, but we never did. I’m hoping we get lucky again tomorrow and have another good weather day as we are moving on to the next place to stay and I have a hike planned during the day…Now the weather says severe thunderstorms tomorrow so we shall see! But today was a pretty great day!Read more