Day 9: More Hilltop Excursions

12/28: Dad took Gregg to the airport at 4AM, so the rest of the family slept in and started the day late. We left the villa around 1-1:30 in search of more hilltop towns to spend the afternoon investigating.
We first ended up in Lucignano, a town Mom and Dad tried but failed to find during their summer visit. They had actually found a different town named Luciano with a sign saying "For Residents Only" and were told to leave when they started touring it! This Lucignano was the one in the guidebook though, and it was pretty neat. It was built as 4 concentric circles inside a fortified wall. We wandered the streets and into a few churches and other buildings. Even the churches in these small towns are really ornate. That surprised me. Most of the shops were closed, either because it was Monday or because we were there during Italian lunchtime, but Emily did manage to find an open pottery shop and bought some ceramics.
The next hilltop town we came across was nowhere near as interesting as Lucignano. Monte San Savino was bigger, but there didn't seem to be as much to do. Most of the shops here were closed too, but we still managed to wander in an out of churches. There were multiple churches in the same square, which is different than the other towns we had visited. It was about 4:30 and we were getting a little hungry. Emily found a restaurant that opened at 5, so we wandered a bit more waiting as the rain slowly started to come down. The weather had been pretty good for the day up until this point. Turns out the restaurant opened at 19:00, which is 7, not 5, so we just packed back into the car and headed back to the villa.
We decided to give Civitella a shot for dinner, as it is the next hill over from our villa. We pulled up at 5:30, and asked the man working the small grocery shop that we had been using if any restaurants were open. As luck would have it, he was friends with the owner of one of the restaurants, and we were told to come back at 7. We returned to the villa and played cards and sat about until dinner.
Dinner was fantastic! The restaurant, L'Antivo Borgo, (we speculated it meant the Old Mill since there was a giant grinder inside) was really small, able to hold 40 people tops. The owner was the waiter and his mother and I think wife worked the kitchens. He spoke excellent English and explained everything on the menu in great detail, which was very helpful. We started with a basket of bread and butter with bits of truffle in it. We had lentil dish on the house as an appetizer, then my first meal arrived: a beautiful lobster pasta, using home made pasta. Kyle's first meal was an absurd amount of foie gras. The look on his face was priceless. For the second course, Dad and I were going to split a bistecka like we did earlier. It ended up feeding all 5 of us easily, with leftovers! The medium rare was actually medium rare this time. The meat was like butter. I know people say that for really good steaks, but I've truly experienced a steak that really melted in your mouth. It was very similar to the foie gras, if you can believe that! For dessert, we had a complimentary creme brule and some complimentary after dinner cookies as well. Kyle also ordered a dessert, but I've forgotten what it was.
The owner was friendly and chatty, the atmosphere was amazing, and the food was to die for. If anyone winds up in Tuscany near Arezzo, go to Civitella and try L'Antivo Borgo. The prices weren't even outrages, it ended up being 250 euro for the 5 of us, with 2 bottles of wine. I think we are going back for New Years (which the owner kept calling "thirty-one" which I thought was interesting) and then watch the fireworks in the valley from the hilltop.