Tuesday - Two Trips In One - ITALY

Tuesday was a rearranged day -- we had planned on doing a little Chianti bike trip around the region in Tuscany to do wine tasting.  After we got to our house and figured how long it took us to get everywhere, we decided to rearrange this day and stay in Umbria, closer to our house.  We still wanted to do wine tasting so, we found a winery closer and took off over the hills to find Lungarotti Winery....

Since it was off season, we got a one on one tour.  The winery wasn't really busy and all the wine was snuggled away in their little barrels, waiting to emerge as class 1 wine.  We got to tour all around the winery and see all the nooks and cranies of the winery and then we got to do a wine tasting.  

 Inside the winery, some of the oak barrels where the wine "gets good".  These are red wines in the barrels.

These are refrigerated "barrels" for white wines.

This is a reserve room for the special red wines.  All the barrels are specific for the wine and are made with all different kinds of wood.  They smelled wonderful!

Labelling and bottling area.

 These are actually sparkling wines.  They have this process of letting all the sediment settle and the have to turn the bottles every now and again and then remove the sediment.

The Lungarotti "famous" red wine.

 Wine tasting time!

 A little family drinking.... Like aunt like niece....

We finished up early afternoon and decided we weren't done with the day yet so we took a quick 30 minute trip over to ASSISI.  I LOVED Assisi!

Stopping outside the city to take pictures...

 Parked and walking inside the city walls...

 Our resident navigator - in car and out....

 This was Brittany's first trip out of the states - that being said - she'd never been in a cathedral in Europe.  I had told her several times that once you see a cathedral in Europe, you've seen them all.  So - I figured it was time to make her see them all....

Outside the cathedral - supposed to be the lions eating the martyrs.

The original ruins of the cathedral underneath - from like the 1500s....

Not me......

Not us....

 Another cathedral on the other side of town -- but this one IS the cathedral of St Francis of Assisi.

This is St Francis and his cathedral.