Bowers Abroad: Tuscany, Assisi, and some great wine

Ciao!

Alright so things have been pretty busy around here! Let's see where I left off.

Last week we had class on Friday and then I went over to my friends' apartment in the center of the city. We all hung out there for a while and then headed to Di Vina -- a wine shop where you bring in an empty bottle and they fill it up with your choice of wine…… It's amazing. Most people end up buying the 2-liter bottle and then bringing it back for refills.

Wonderful place

Some of the wine

Dog we saw sitting in front of its owner's shop… So popular in Florence to see this!

Artwork on the "Do Not Enter" signs all over Florence

On Saturday, we took a class trip to Siena and San Gimignano, two very cute Tuscan cities. In Siena, we took a tour and then were left with some time to get lunch (a panino) and explore on our own. Siena was fantastic, but about 2 hours into the 2 1/2 hour tour my stomach was growling so loud that it was a distraction for everyone. The views in Siena were amazing and the city center is gorgeous. It is shaped like a shell and there is an annual horse race every July in the center. There are different families throughout the city, represented by various animals, and ten jockeys and horses are chosen every year randomly to compete against each other. The race apparently lasts about 90 seconds and the jockey usually gets thrown off, so it is basically a race between the horses. The center is PACKED! We saw some pictures and I cannot imagine how unique that weekend is in the city. San Gimignano was my favorite city, though, because it was a little smaller but also because it is home to a "world-famous" gelato shop. Not sure if it is really world-famous but I didn't really care. I got mint and chocolate hazelnut. The chocolate hazelnut was pretty good but the MINT!! THE MINT!! It tasted like it was right out of a garden. Kind of weird at first and definitely different but it had such a refreshing taste. I almost went back for seconds. Good thing I didn't because Meaghan (my travel buddy!) and I ended up walking around and exploring only to find ourselves in the middle of an Italian wedding. We walked into a church (the doors were open and no one stopped us…) to be witnessing the end of the ceremony. We looked at the famous frescoes on the walls for a bit and then decided to go into the courtyard of the church where we saw the priest smoking. That was interesting… maybe he was stressed from giving the wedding ceremony? Who knows. We decided to walk back out the church only to notice that we were walking through a crowd of people with instruments lining up……wait what? We scampered down the steps and then about two minutes after, the bride and groom walked out the same way and the band started playing. AND CONFETTI WAS EVERYWHERE! It was so fun. About 8 people from our program came up to us afterwards (including our academic director…) and asked how we had gotten into the wedding.

Siena centro

Il Duomo in Siena

Usually the ground is covered in the Siena Duomo but it isn't for a few months of the year… we got lucky! Beautiful marble

English bulldog in Siena…. shout out to Dad!!

Siena!

Love

GELATO

Cheese on cheese on cheese

Thought mom would appreciate this chicken pitcher

Wedding fun!!

Tuscan hills

Sunday morning, I woke up and threw my clothes in the washing machine (it had been 16 days since I had done any laundry) and worked on some homework. Then, Tomasso came home and took Carol and me to a wine tasting festival in Chianti! MAMMA MIA! The wine here is incredible. We met three of Tomasso's friends and had a great time with them all and then finished the evening with some sandwiches and a meat/cheese platter. We chose some sort of salted salami and then bull and wild boar. The bull was incredible. I am still learning how a country can have such insane food choices that never seem to disappoint my taste buds. Barbara has yet to cook a dish that I don't really like. This week, we've had pesto pasta with a breaded meat, spaghetti with garlic and cheese, some sort of pork with ham wrapped inside (heavenly), minestrone soup... the list goes on and on. Dinner is easily my favorite part of the day because I get to sit and catch up with everyone while eating some of the best food I have ever had.

This week has been pretty normal so far! We had a quiz in Italian on Wednesday and we've started brainstorming for our 10-page paper that we have to write for our History of Food class. Usually I dread writing a paper but my professor has been really open about ideas and very helpful. There was a bus strike on Wednesday -- the first one of the semester -- and the buses were only operating from 6-9am and then from 11-3pm. I got out of class at 3:30 and walked home, expecting there to be no buses anywhere, but I counted about eight on my way back. Is that how bus strikes work or am I completely missing something? Maybe that's how strikes work in Italy…

I've been running most evenings along the Arno where there are some nice trails and parks to run through. The runs have been great! Oh except for the fact that I swallow an average of four bugs every run and a few also make their way into my eye. Also, there's a bridge I run under that's in a quieter area of the Arno. The other evening, there was a couple sitting together enjoying the view of the river and enjoying the peaceful moment. I thought it was so cute and didn't want to disturb them until I tripped on a metal thing that was sticking out of the gravel and completely ate it behind them. Mi scusa!!

Today, Meaghan, Gabi, and I went to Assisi! A very cute city that is about 2 1/2 hours southeast of Florence. It was beautiful! Such a quiet town with some big churches, and it was nice to get away from tourists for the day. We took the train this morning and got to Assisi around 10:30. Thank goodness there was an information booth there with maps and bus tickets because without it, I'm not sure what we would have ended up doing… We took the bus to the top of the city's hill and made our way throughout the entire place -- we visited about four huge churches with frescoes and all sorts of tombs (including St. Francesco!) and then grabbed lunch at a cute little cafe, followed by gelato (duh). After exploring for a couple more hours, we snagged the train back home -- only to return to Florence to find out we had missed the craziest hail storm of the year. There was still piles of hail on the streets and we didn't really know what had happened until we got back to our houses. This happens pretty rarely but the hail was the size of large grapes… a ton of trees fell down and cars were smashed. Glad we missed that storm