Il Focolare San Gimignano

What of life'spleasures could surpass fresh Tuscan bread spread with thick local butter and a slab of local cheese? We are putting on the pounds since we arrived in Italy, but since we got to Lucca, the problem has grown really serious. Our apartment here has to be seen to bebelieved - it's in an old building but is a modern apartment with heati...

So this weekend was my first real adventure outside of Rome. Me, my roommates, and some of our other friends in our program met up in Florence and all stayed together in the same hostel. It took a 16 Euro, 4 hour train ride each way, and even more walking than I do here in Rome. Maybe it was just because in Rome, we can save all of our sightseei...

This week was super busy, our Venice and Spring Break trips start tomorrow which means I get to see my family soon! AND I'm going to Sevilla at the end of the week to see Christine!!! Monday and Tuesday we had class, not anything too exciting (my ring for jewelry is being cast in silver this week!) Wednesday we took a trip to Siena, It rained i...

After dinner Tuesday night, we walked around our hotel to find a place with free wifi. The Italians do not believe in free internet here, only internet cafés so our mission to download The Bachelor was not working out as planned. We got so desperate that we were walking around, with our laptops open, checking the airports to see what places had ...

The past two days have been pretty great.

Yesterday was a sort of
day-long orientation, and we got to do things that nobody wants to read
about like meeting professors and such.

For the uninitiated, the
Villa Corsi-Salviati is in the city of Sesto Fiorentino, which is 6
roman miles from downtown Florence (Se...

Today is our last day at the Villa. I made some tea with a plant a woman I met the first day here gave me before she left for Canada. Don't know what it is, but it smells like lemon and is wonderful to taste. As for the coffee, it was made in a small Italian Pot on the gas stove. Holly told me until about 1996 they didn't even have running water...

[S] So we've been in Italy almost a month and I finally took a cooking class! One of the things I had decided I would try to do on our trip is to practice cooking (as I knew we'd be cooking a lot for ourselves to save some money). And we also want to find some tradtional dishes specific to the countries we're visiting that we like so I could tr...

It felt so good to be behind the wheel of a car. We hadn't been in a car, even a cab, since the 14th of August. Crazy. The roads through the Chianti wine trail wind and wind and then they wind some more. It's not a good idea to daydream while at the wheel here, you could end up in a vineyard or worse over a very high cliff. The landscape is so a...

Well today was our favorite day of bus travel so far. We sat up the front of the bus like bandits and annoyed had a ball chatting to Louis and Ricky all day. I don't think there's been a day like it since. We stopped off at a french perfumery on the way out of France. They showed us how they make it and we got to smell a few samples. I couldn't ...

Once again we were up early and on the bus for a day trip to Florence. We began the day at the Accademia. Michelangelo's David is another of the special moments on this trip. It is something we have all seen photos of but seeing it in person was a moving experience. After leaving the Accademia, we met up with our local guide who walked us to the...