Finding More Buried Treasure

After leaving the Museum of Torture we spotted a restaurant with a large boar head outside the door. In Italy, eating wild boar is as common as eating pork in the USA. We decided as a group that if we were going to try some wild boar in Italy, a restaurant with a giant boars head outside would be a good place to do it. We walked inside to see a narrow hallway down to the back of the shop. We headed past the hundreds of red and white whites for sale to see only a small deli counter at the back of the "restaurant." Maybe we were mistaken - maybe this wasn't a restaurant - only a small shop with meats to go? After realizing before that nothing in Volterra is as it seems I should've known that there would be more either up or downstairs...

Brittany noticed the shop owner standing over by a stone staircase just off to the side. Click. He was trying to show us that we were suppose to go DOWN. We all followed him and were invited into the most beautiful underground dining room I could have ever imagined. It was like a mystical cave that can only be found in movies or dreams. When we went down the first flight of steps there was a small candle-lit couples dining "nook" overlooking a waterfall with colored lights rotating in its backdrop. It was completely unreal - if only I had a romantic date. As we continued down the stairs surrounding the waterfall we then entered a larger dining room with a piano and tons of wine racks. We kept on going until we entered their largest dining room. The final room could fit our larger group (nine of us girls) and was decorated with fairies and mystical creatures all around. Fairies and trolls stared at us while we too our seats at the bottom of the waterfall.

The underground passages

Hard to see the waterfall above the small fountain,
but this was our lunch environment!

For lunch I ordered a Wild Boar panini with aged sheep milk cheese, lettuce and sweet balsamic vinegar. I was relunctant that I would finally be trying wild boar, but it actually turned outs so much better than I imagined. Even though the sandwich was huge, I finished every last crumb of it. I found myself scraping the last drops of balsamic off the plate with my fork. The balsamic here is so much better than back home. I'm still not sure how I am going to manage when I get back home and try to find half of the fresh ingredients I've been blessed with here. I guess you can say I'm pretty spoiled here. Not only was I eating a delicious lunch, I was eating it in a uniquely beautiful underground cave. The environment alone  made my meal a success, but after trying that sandwich I was officially in love. I simply must go back!

This picture does no justice to my wild boar panini

After lunch we headed to our favorite cioccolaterria (chocolate shop) in all of Volterra. On top of it being as beautiful as every other reastraurant in Volterra, it also had such interesting and delicious varieties of desserts. Their enormous show case of chocolates featured any and every kind of treat you could ever want. Too bad there were just too many to try them all. This wasn't our first time trying some sweets from this shop, and I'm confident it won't be our last. :)

Chocolate locks, keys and tools at the Cioccolaterria