It was a partly cloudy day today, with lots of atmospheric effects.

June 6: Last walking day,
a visit to Badia a Coltibuono,
and our Festive Dinner

Just the walking on this page, and separate pages for our visit to Badia and for the raucous and delicious dinner we had as a farewell.

I think I must have gotten writer’s cramp around this time, because my journal has practically nothing to say about the walk this morning: “We walked, mostly, to our country lunch, after sitting through an oil-tasting, and then walked some more.” This, I think, several months after the event, seems unduly dismissive. But maybe on the next day, when I wrote the journal entry, I was still reeling from the much more memorable evening events.

Top row, there we are on the road (big image, small) on the left, and on the right is a good close-up of the leaf-axil of Fuller’s Teasel (big image, small; also at the right margin as big and small). It belongs here in Europe, but I gather that it’s an unpleasant invasive weed at home. We were all interested to see how it holds the rain-water.

In the second row, Mark takes pictures of something or other that Glenn and Claire are looking at (big image, small), and in the right, he’s getting a snap of our guides Angelica and Gianni (big image, small).

Next, three Tuscan vistas (upper left: big image, small; upper right: big image, small; lower left: big image, small), and then (lower right: big image, small) we’re all standing in the olive-oil establishment, looking at the bins where the olives are collected. We spent a pleasant while going through the facility where the olives are pressed and the oil is bottled. We had a tasting afterwards, and I must confess that my olive-oil connoisseurship is sadly lacking. I could hardly taste any difference among the oils we sampled.

Two hours later we were at lunch, and I took pictures of the festive group: on the left (big image, small) you see, front to back, María, Joanna, Mark, Elena, and Claire; in the center shot, (big image, small) it’s Anna, Juan, Glenn, Guillermo, and Angelica. I guess that must be Pocho raising his glass at the extreme right, and that would be a sliver of Gianni's face at the left edge of the picture.

An hour later I took the right-hand picture in the bottom row, of Guillermo, Pocho, and Mark on the road (big image, small).

Half an hour after that, I took a few more pictures before we got back on the bus to return to our hotel. Lovely blue sky in this one (big, small). But the day’s activities were not even half over: more on later doings in the next two pages.