Marion Twp. couple finds Italian countryside pretty as a picture
A 600-year-old stone farmhouse might not seem like the ideal hotel to some, but for a retired Marion Township couple it was the perfect vacation spot in the Tuscan sun.
Lorraine and Tom Kollar spent a few days at Cretaiole, as the farmhouse is known, in October as part of a three-country European tour.
“We drove to Toronto and left our car there because the airfare was half price. First we had to go to JFK in New York and then we just made the plane to London,” said Lorraine Kollar.
“We stayed in London three days and saw two West End shows,” she said.
“Then we went from London to Paris via the Eurostar Chunnel. And we stayed in Paris three days. That was great,” Kollar said. “We toured Paris, saw three different museums.”
“We left Paris and went to Naples by airplane, and then we had a car and a driver to Positano (Italy) on the Amalfi Coast,” she said.
“Then we went to Tuscany by taking two trains,” she said. Upon reaching the region in central Italy, the Kollars rented a car.
“You have to have a car in Tuscany, otherwise you can't do much,” she said.
But the drive gave them a chance to take in the hilly countryside dotted with vineyards and olive groves.
“The beauty of it is the landscape, all the little towns, and there's no way to get to them without a car,” she said.
Cretaiole, is a five-minute drive from the village of Pienza. Sitting on a hilltop with views of the surrounding countryside, the farmhouse was originally built in the 1400s, but is now subdivided into comfortable apartments for visiting tourists.
“Isabella Moricciani and her husband, Carlo, owned the farm,” said Kollar. “His family owned this farmhouse, and now none of them actually live there anymore. They live five minutes away. Carlo operates another working farm,” she said.
The Kollars stayed in a studio apartment with a bathroom and kitchenette called La Cantina.
It was a ground-floor apartment with two entrances, one to an interior courtyard and one to a yard and garden.The house was converted to six apartments, each with its own entrance. Each apartment was furnished in the traditional Tuscan style with terracotta tile floors and wood and tile-beamed ceilings.“There were 12 people staying there,” said Kollar. “They give you a cell phone with all the phone numbers in it and a gigantic binder, a travel guide. It has every place that you might want to see and a calendar of activities for the week.”Activities included cooking classes, guided tours of the countryside, visits to wine cellars and themed lunches and dinners.She and Tom cooked their own breakfasts and sometimes lunches in their kitchenette.'“There were lots of olive groves and vineyards and a huge garden. The garden still had tomatoes growing and I found a couple of eggplants,” she said.“There was a kitchenette in an ancient armoire, a sink and an electric stove, I cooked breakfast every day,” she said. “I made dinner a couple of times, made sauce, made the pasta, bought homemade gnocchi.”“There were cheeses made from sheep's milk, fresh tomatoes, cured meat like salami. Everywhere you go, there is bread and cheese, and there are a lot of walnuts in everything,” she said of Tuscan cooking. “Everything is a little bit different. They don't bread things that much, everything is sautéed in garlic and olive oil.Later on, she said, Luciano, the 80-year-old patriarch of the family, knocked on their door with a plate of ricotta cheese.“Luckily I know some Italian. Luciano only spoke Italian. He told me to get a plate, scooped the cheese out on the plate and asked me to add honey,” she said.“He came back a half-hour later and said 'Come with me,' and so we went out to the veranda with him carrying a bottle of wine and a bottle of grappa, an Italian liquor that is really strong,” she said. “He is pouring grappa and wine and lemonchilello and giving us biscottis and telling us to dunk them in the wine.”
The Kollars explored the countryside around the farmhouse as well.“They have all these little hill towns. It looks like a picture, all of it,” she said. The only drawback, she noted, is that the medieval-era towns ban cars from their streets.“You have to park outside the towns, It's kind of tricky,” she said.They attended an olive oil-tasting festival in Castelmuzio.“We also saw a harpsichord maker, a professional olive oil taster. People had shops and crafts, It was just real interesting,” she said.“It was just so quaint, All the towns had a wall around them, because they had to defend themselves,” she added.“Pienza was rebuilt by Pope Pius II. It is a Renaissance town. Everything is pretty much the same as it was 600 years ago. There is this giant tower they used to look out to see who was going to attack. Now it is an apartment building,” she said.“They were shooting a television show while we were there, about the Medicis from Florence. It's now being shown in Italy,” Kollar said.“There were about 100 actors in the square dressed in period garb. They let you watch which was surprising because here they chase you away.”The weather was perfect for their day trips. “It's October, we had beautiful weather in the mid-60s to 70s. It was a little chilly at night and in the morning,” she said.“We spent a lot of time walking around the area. We saw where they filmed 'The English Patient,'” she said.“We were so comfortable there but realized we had to leave (after four nights in Tuscany). It was so sad,” she said.“We missed a lot of things that we wanted to do later in the week. Just staying there is so nice. It makes you feel like you are part of it. Those little towns were just beautiful. It just looks like a painting wherever you go,” Kollar said.
