BikerScott

We're back in Le Marche for our 5th visit to the region, this time venturing a little farther south. Daily (or every second day depending on how much wine I've had) updates on our progress. Expect lots of food, wine, and a few observations about the area.

BikerScott

Day One & Two - Driving, driving, and more driving

The trip didn’t get off to the easiest start. We’d planned on leaving work a little early to take the Heathrow Express from Paddington to the airport and have a relatively short wait for our 8:20pm flight to Bologna. The first part of the plan went off without a hitch – I even managed to have a few beers before I ducked out of the office (we have a beer tap in the kitchen at work…just one of those things). It all started to go wrong when we got to the airport.


Our flight was delayed. Not by a lot, only an hour and a half, but enough to throw off the plan. Rather than a quick wait, we were forced to go to Giraffe for a meal and probably more drinks than were advisable, especially given that I’d already had a few. We eventually boarded and got our seats. For some reason, they’d started loading cattle class before the business class and pre-boarding was finished. We found some overhead space for my bag and watched the chaos as everyone else struggled to put their GIANT carry-on into the little space was remaining. It’s amazing how people thing a huge bag will fit into a little tiny spot in the bin, but they try to shove it as if the laws of…I don’t know, physics probably, will adjust themselves to allow it to fit when it clearly won’t.


The flight attendants seemed a bit disinterested, but I would probably be as well. If you decide to bring half of your worldly possessions into the cabin with you, you can sort yourself out mate would be my thinking. I fell asleep just after take-off as normal, while Jamie got to enjoy the warmest airplane trip I think we’ve ever been on. It was sweltering. They did manage to turn on the air conditioning, which was nice, however it was after we landed, which was not. A final little “f**k you” from BA.


Bologna airport is quite small and relatively well organized. Due to the delayed departure, we didn’t arrive until after 1am. Of course Jamie’s bag was one of the last to be sent through – we’re pretty sure they had to go back for a second trip to the plane to get the last of the bags. It’s always worrying when one of our two bags arrives and the other doesn’t, however there were quite a few people with us waiting for bags so we didn’t worry too much. They arrived, we breezed through customs, and found the cash point to get some taxi money.


A British family had arrived just before us. They took both of the ATMs and proceeded to apparently have their first interaction with the technology. First, they tried to take out €500 each and were shocked that it didn’t work. They then spent 15 minutes trying progressively smaller amounts until they got to €200. Eureka. It was painful to watch, especially as tired as we were.


After finally getting some cash, we grabbed a taxi from the taxi rank (top European tip – never take a taxi from an airport or train station that you don’t get from the official taxi ranks – often loads of drivers will try to pick up passengers, but if it’s not the official rank you have no idea what you’re going to be charged). The drive into Bologna was one of the top three most terrifying taxi rides we’ve ever had. I made the mistake of telling him my name in Italian when he asked, and he took that to mean I wanted to have an entire conversation for the drive. By conversation, I mean he barked the names of various rock, pop, and Motown artists at high volume to see if we liked them, whilst driving extraordinarily aggressively and quickly. For the entire drive. Most of the time he turned around to see our reaction to the band proposed. I thought we were going to die.


We made it to the hotel, although I think we lost at least a few years of life expectancy each after the stress of the ride. I think the hotel guy felt bad for us as he gave us a free upgrade on the room, which was very nice of him. We were so shaken up by the experience that we were forced to open a half-bottle of wine from the minibar, which actually turned out not to be exorbitantly expensive.


The room was nice, the bed was comfy, the sleep was too short. We had to pick up the car at 10am, so we got up at 8am after finally going to sleep at 2am. The car turned out to be a quite nice little Fiat 500X, which is a slightly manlier version of the original Fiat 500, which looks like a small child’s shoe. And is usually pink or baby blue.


The drive out of Bologna was familiar – we’ve made that same journey a few times and were looking forward to a quick run down the autostrata to Senigalia to meet some friends for a nice lunch. A quick run wasn’t in the cards, unfortunately.


There had been at least two breakdowns and a lorry had lost its load somewhere on the Autostrada. Part of it had been reduced from three lanes down to one, and we were at a standstill for most of it. After an hour of swearing, we’d only managed to drive 20kms, and I’d started to lose feeling in my clutch leg. We decided to take a detour and get off the Autostrada to find a quicker way around the traffic – according to the traffic map on our phones it wasn’t that far. We drove back and forth along small country roads until it looked like we were past the tailbacks, at which point we rejoined the Autostrada. We were lucky, the traffic had cleared and while it was busy, we were at least moving. Not long after getting back on the motorway, we drove past a SUV towing a big speedboat. This wouldn’t have been remarkable in any way other than the fact that we’d been sitting behind him in the traffic for quite a long time before our little detour. Oh well, at least we hadn’t spent the time just sitting there.


We made it to Senigallia only 40 minutes late for our reservations at Madonnina del Pescatore, a Michelin One Star restaurant on the beachfront just outside of town (we’d originally planned on being about 45 minutes early, thinking we could stretch our legs after the drive and maybe have a quick coffee).


Lunch was amazing. The 9 courses (I think) of seafood were all incredible, and I don’t normally go for seafood. The company was fun too – our friends Jason and Ashley had driven down from their Agritourismo in Piobbico to join us – we hadn’t seen them in three years since we last stayed with them; it was great to catch up. It’s nice to reunite with friends you haven’t seen in years and pick up like no time at all has passed.


The rest of the drive down to the B&B was relatively uneventful, other than getting horrifically lost nearly in sight of it. We’d been given the GPS coordinates, but I must have entered them wrong, because after being directed through a TINY village, around a hairpin turn between two large buildings and down a steep road, we ran out of pavement. White roads (dirt roads basically) aren’t unexpected in the backcountry of Italy, however when it told us to leave the dirt road and drive into a field we felt we may have been led slightly astray. We returned to the paved bits of the world and aimed instead for the nearest village to the B&B, then followed the provided directions. I think, in fairness, the GPS took us the back way and if we’d driven across the field, forded a small stream, and then up the incredibly steep hill behind the B&B we would’ve been fine.


The room we’ve booked is beautiful – exactly what we want our house in Italy to look like. We even have a fair-sized balcony off the back with a view over the valley. It’s very green with rolling hills and a few towns and houses scattered around. While we’ve spent quite a lot of time over the years in Le Marche, we’ve never been this far south. We’ve tended to stay around Urbino in the northern part of the region, having only driven down to Matelica on our last trip. This time, we’re in Fermo province, staying just outside a small village called “Francavilla d’Ete” We had a recovery glass or three of wine after the stresses of the day before finally calling it a night and going to bed.

cafegoddess

Can't wait to follow your adventures. Love your trip reports!

OReilly

Pouring myself a large glass of wine to read and enjoy this Jamie

kerouac

<i>don’t normally go for seafood</i>

Not sure if I'll be able to continue reading.

bvlenci

Nice to see you back in my neck of the woods!

I'm pretty sure Madonnina del Pescatore has two Michelin stars. I know for a fact that the other Michelin-starred restaurant in Senigallia, Uliassi, has two stars. More important, to Italians, Uliassi is ranked among the top five restaurants in Italy by L'Espresso's restaurant guide. Of the two, I myself prefer Uliassi. Uliassi also has a special prize from the Espresso for its wine cellar.

I hope you'll venture into some of the areas whose tourism was badly damaged by last year's earthquakes. The region is still breathtakingly beautiful, and they badly need the summer visitors to return. We'll be back for sure, if they finish the repairs to our summer house before autumn sets in. We've been there twice for day trips, to let inspectors in and get permits. Driving through the area, you don't see any effects of the earthquakes. Mainly the historic centers of some of the towns were affected.

My husband went to a private school in Fermo, and we've been there twice for his school reunions. They have an interesting municipal library, which has part of the vast library of Queen Christina of Sweden, who abdicated her throne and moved to Rome when she converted to Catholicism. Her Vatican "minder", good friend, and, some say, her lover, was from Fermo.

I suggest you visit nearby Torre di Palme, a little walled town on a cliff overlooking the Adriatic. A little jewel.

If you're at all interested in hiking, or even just a nice long walk, I recommend the Gola dell'Infernaccio.

Florida1

What a beginning to your trip! 9 courses of seafood sounds really good!

Your GPS story made me laugh, as on a trip driving in Crete, ours said "turn left on road," only it was not a road, but a footpath through a vineyard. We drove on, forcing it to recalculate.

Can't wait to read more about your trip!

bvlenci

Our town has a street with stairs on it, and somebody's GPS sent them down that street.

irishface

Reading along and looking forward to more stories of your trip!

yestravel

Great beginning at least to read about, but I imagine much of it not to experience.

massimop

Planning a car trip leavin Bologna based on the idea that there won't be a lot of horrendous is most often a mistake.

Share Kerouac's heartbreak re seafood, and will leave the thread noting that going to this region of Italy for wine is ... odd, but then alcohol is the prime driver of some travel no matter the quality of the alcohol.

Adelaidean

Lovely, can't wait for the photos......

sundriedtopepo

This sounds so enticing...looking forward to descriptions of food, wine, and beautiful countryside and towns.

Treesa

I'm waiting for the stunning photos. Thanks for sharing your adventures.

Keren

Loving this, eagerly waiting for more.

BikerScott

Day 3

We were both up incredibly early – the shutters on the windows let in a lot of light, and the sun comes up early in July in Italy. The sun also brings the roosters who live up the hill, and the dogs who apparently like to bark at the roosters. I managed to doze on and off until 8:30, but Jamie was up at 7:00 and out the east-facing balcony soaking up the morning sun.
The view is incredible, better even in the morning than it appeared when we arrived the night before. We’re perched on the edge of a hill looking down to the bottom of the valley and across to the other side of the hill. I think she didn’t mind getting up early to take in the sights and relative silence of the morning.

I finally got up and spent some time stretching my back. The beds in hotels in Italy are almost universally harder than I prefer, and they cause my sciatica to flare up a bit – it takes a while for it to calm down when I first roll out of bed. We’d neglected to buy coffee at the grocery store the day before, assuming that the room would have some (they mention on the website that the kitchen is stocked with essentials like salt, pepper, oil, etc…in my mind, coffee is essential). I was forced to drink water with absolutely no caffeine in it at all.

We didn’t spend that much time getting ready. We had lunch reservations for 1pm but wanted to check out a house I’d seen for sale online. It was sort of on the way, and in an area that we were interested in checking out. We drove out to the very small village of Camporotondo di Fiastrone about an hour away. The pictures of the house looked really nice, but we couldn’t find it, despite driving around for quite a while. The village was much smaller than we’d been expecting, and we decided that even if we’d found the house, there wasn’t enough around to want to live near, so we headed a bit farther south to check out San Ginesio, which we’d read good things about.

San Ginesio is a bit farther south, a little closer to the earthquake epicentre. We’d seen pictures of some of the villages that were really badly affected like Amandola and Amitrice , however we hadn’t really thought about the damage to the other old towns in the area. While the damage in San Ginesio wasn’t devastating, it was significant, especially to those living in the town. We parked just outside the old town and walked in, amazed at the amount of rubble around the ancient church and attached hospital – it was completely blocked off with big “Red Zone” signs on the barriers. We were there just as church was getting out – they were evidently using the nearby elementary school to conduct services. I’m not sure if they’re planning on fixing the church.

It was market day in San Ginesio as it turned out, but it was really difficult to find the centre of town. Many of the little alleys and roads in the centre of the village were blocked off and marked as Red Zones, with sad little piles of rubble at the bases of the walls, or completely blocking the lanes. It demonstrates the vastness of the damage that that amount of rubble was left a year later. Many of the houses showed signs of damage, and more than a few had rudimentary wooden braces and metal straps holding the walls together.

We eventually found the market, but there wasn’t much there. We’d been hoping for a café for a coffee or even a glass of wine, but there didn’t seem to be anything available. We walked around pretty much all of the small town that we could before giving up and heading back to the car.

We drove to the tiny hamlet for lunch, arriving about half an hour before our reservation, getting to town just before noon. We know it was early for lunch, but we had nothing else to do and hoped they might be able to seat us early. Lunch was in Borgo Vestignano, sort of near Caldarola, at a recommended restaurant called Piccolo di Rame.

I know Borgo means Hamlet, but I was expecting something a little bigger than Borgo Vestignano for some reason. It was tiny. We parked on the road below the village, which was a really good idea in retrospect. We couldn’t find a way up into town, however found a road that seemed wind up the hill behind it, so we started hiking up. We were both wearing flip flops, it was nearly 30ºC and there wasn’t a huge breeze in the forest. We got very warm. We ended up at the top of the borgo with no idea how to find the restaurant. Fortunately, there weren’t many options in a town that small, and we followed the sound of people talking.

The clue was in the name – Piccolo di Rame is almost as small as the borgo it’s in. The kitchen staff were having their pre-service smoke and chat on the stairs outside the front door as we arrived. Their English was about as good as our Italian (marginal in both cases, but willing to try) but they managed to convey that they started service at 1pm – so much for the confirmation email for 12:30 that they’d sent us. I guess our look of dismay as we started down the hill to get the car and find something to do for an hour made them feel bad, as one of them offered to let us sit inside and have some coffee or wine while we waited. We took him up on the offer.

The restaurant didn’t seem any bigger inside than it looked from the road. The building itself is an old olive mill, with the huge millstone still on its wheel just inside the front door. We sat by ourselves in the small dark room on very tippy three-legged chairs with a carafe of wine and a bottle of water. We could hear the kitchen team getting ready for lunch service on the other side of the door, but they more or less left us to ourselves. The other tables were set up for what looked like two large parties.

Eventually 1pm rolled around and the kitchen leapt into action, just as the other tables arrived. We were the only tourists in the place – there turned out to be two separate families celebrating birthdays, and us. This isn’t a complaint – I love being the only tourist in a restaurant. Places that locals eat at are almost invariably good, if sometimes a little challenging. You have to accept that from time to time you’ll have to eat brains, tripe, or other bits that aren’t normally found on British or Canadian menus.

Lunch was massive. 12 courses, no menu. I’m not going to go through each and every dish, but the highlights for us were the onion soup (nothing like the French version – this was very light, white, and delicately flavoured), tomato soup with polenta and rice, the “Mother of Carbonara” with pasta, cheese, and guanciale (pigs cheek) (evidently how the shepherds ate it in the Sibilini Mountains), and a single huge ravioli stuffed with fresh ricotta and covered in a truffle cream sauce. There were three meat courses! The owner was fantastic, fully decked out in kitchen whites and bandana despite only looking into the kitchen a few times. He spent the entire service moving from table to table explaining the dishes to everyone. All of them were made with local ingredients and using local recipes and techniques, most of them given to him by his mother. He didn’t speak much English, but made sure we understood the bits we couldn’t get in Italian by using google translate.

We’d more or less been left to ourselves by everyone else in the restaurant for the entire meal, however I did hear a few comments about “Inglese” from the table behind us. As we were paying the bill, the waiter asked where we are from. While we live in London, we’re originally from Canada. The table behind heard us say Canada, and immediately the cry of “Non Inglese, sono Canadesi!” We instantly became the rockstars of the party. One of the granddaughters of Nona (who was celebrating her 80th birthday as it transpired) is just about to go on a six-month exchange to Winnipeg for reasons we couldn’t quite understand. A group clustered around us and peppered us with questions about Canada, Winnipeg, and most importantly why a pair of Canadians had chosen to visit Marche (the response that it was mostly for the food greatly impressed Nona who grinned like a maniac and patted Jamie on the cheek when it was translated for her).

We eventually extricated ourselves, somewhat bemused by the sudden attention, and even more amazed at the price for such a delicious meal. As there was no menu, we didn’t really know what to expect. We’d had a bet during the meal of the final price – two carafes of good white wine, two bottles of fizzy water, 12 courses of amazing food, and two cups of coffee (I managed spill one almost immediately on it being put onto the table). Jamie had bet on €40 per person, I figured closer to €60. It turned out to be €60 for both of us. Unbelievable.

We drove back home, having cleverly programmed the location of the bit of road leading to the B&B before we left this morning so as to avoid the off-roading scenario. We spent a little time on the balcony enjoying a glass of wine before going downstairs for Ian and Bob’s legendary “Sunday Pizza Night.” Every Sunday night, they fire up their pizza oven have a make-it-yourself pizza party. They provide the dough and all the ingredients, all the guests create their own version of the best pizza they can think of. It was great fun, especially for the kids, and most of the pizzas were really good (the gorgonzola and pear I wasn’t a fan of – I’d expected more gorgonzola flavour but I think it was mellowed too much by the heat of the fire). We had a bit of wine in addition to the pizza, mostly from one of the local wineries. Excellent finish to a very good, if slightly sobering day.

sundriedtopepo

That lunch sounds delish! Can't quite figure the exchange to Winnipeg though.

OReilly

Excellent!

"we’re originally from Canada": I always declare that I am originally for Ireland, but have spent more than half my life in Canada, proud of both citizenships. Who does not LOVE Canadians

annhig

i won't say "great start" as that would clearly be incorrect but your trials and tribulations certainly made for an entertaining read. As someone once said 'things can only get better!" and it seems that they did.

looking forward to more.

Adelaidean

"Non Inglese" ..... too funny.

I am Australian and thought my German to be pretty good (German parents), so in Nuremberg was chatting/ ordering in German; dismayed to found out later they assumed I was Russian...not sure if that had any bearing on the service