Podere Villuzza San Gimignano

For the last couple weeks my Italian culture class has been on and off again because my professor was hospitalized with pneumonia. This week she finally resumed lectures, however we are in a different class room that is literally right across from her apartment so she doesn't have to walk a long way in the cold. And it is getting really cold in Siena right now.

This, unfortunately, means ...

... trees lined the road ahead and at the top of the next hill stood another walled town with thick town towers like a castle. Vilmo pointed to this place and said this was his town called Monticciello. We drove up to the front arch next to construction fencing. He told me that the restaurant just inside the entrance sold his products. This town is known for their big theater performance put on every summer, Vilmo said, and some of his wwoofers performed ...

... gorgeous fettuccine with black truffles that I have ever tasted. (The truffles were so delicate, and nutty, and melt-in-your-mouth…) For our mains (“secondi piatti”), I had a mixed salad (I know, boring, but it’s hard to eat so much food in the middle of the day!) and Murray had sausage with cannelloni beans in a wonderful sauce. (Yes, he enjoyed some beer, too!) For a small dessert, we ordered a biscuit version of Siena ...

... dans les jardins!

ensuite on est aller voir le vrai "David" de michealange. installer au bout d,un aller d'un petit muse au gros prix! c'est impressionant de voir sa grandeur et surtout de penser qu'il a ete realise dans un seul bloc de marbre, sculte a la main avec les outils de l'epoque. Comme dans tout bon muse, il est impossible prendre des photos!

... as the place was so cramped and nothing else to do in town, but ended up having a good night both nights we were there.


Sunday did the walk between the 5 towns from Riomaggore to Monterosso. Took about 4.5 hours including thestops in each town to check them out.
The views out over the Ligurian Sea are stunning. Leaving one town and seeing the next far off in the distance, and sometimes a lot higher up in altitude, was really cool.

... was the wine tasting. We went to a vineyard about 8 km away. We met the owner of the vineyard, Luigi, who instructed us in "wine tasting school". It was very educational, as well as entertaining. We tasted seven or eight wines and also got to sample some local balsamic and truffle olive oil, which was outstanding. After the tour, we decided we had time to make it to Pisa, so that is where we headed next (see next entry).

... would be the crazy sport of soccer, or "football". We live across the street from the Florence soccer stadium so we thought we would go and see them play Milan. The game was at 8:30pm and we got there right on time. When we got inside the stadium there were soooo many people there! It was loud with cheering and chanting and there didn't seem to be any labels on the the sections and no one seemed to be able to help us find our seats! Then we heard that we ...

... someone in italian where David was. THe man was nice enough not to make fun of us too much. Apparently we had walked into the wrong museum. Only then did we look at our ticket- Musei fiorentini. Ooops. Tomorrow we're off to a small medeival town called Lucca and then (hopefully) we'll try to catch David at some point. If not, we'll have to pose with the fake one or buy a little statuette and say that we did.

Today I visited the city that gave birth to the Renaissance: Florence. Actually, it was the 3rd time this trip that I've been there (first time was just in the train station on the way between Venice and Cinque Terre, second time I walked around the vicinity of the train and bus stations on my way to San Gimignano. Florence is a very touristy place, but with good reason: the palace and museum I went to are some of the best in the world. At breakfast this morning, I ...

... He is traveling until August, so he is traveling for quite a while. It seems to be more common for Australians to save lots of money then take a 6+ month trip backpacking around the world. They do it a lot more then Americans do. I think its great and more people back home should do it. Our American dollar is not as strong as Euro, but it's better then the Aussie dollar. The Aussie dollar is only worth $.75 US and it takes almost two Aussie dollars to make one Euro. They ...