A Vineyard, a Town, & a Garden

Today is All Saints' Day, a national holiday here in Italy, which means this is one of my first days off in quite some time.  I must admit that among all of my homework and traveling I've been a bit unmotivated to keep up with this blog, but I'll try to amend my absence with this post.  Since my last post I've visited Greve in Chianti, San Gimignano, the Boboli Gardens in Florence, Siena, and Torino with my school and each trip had a distinct flavor that is difficult to convey with words, but I'll try my hardest.  To give every excursion justice, I'm going to only talk about the first three in this post, and save Siena and Torino for the next.

Greve in Chianti

Greve is a pretty small town in Chianti and within walking distance is a villa/vineyard owned by Count Niccolò Capponi, who is by far one of the biggest characters I've ever met.  A continuous stream of inappropriate sarcastic (or overly blunt) statements, which I personally found hilarious (whether I was laughing with him or at him varied).  My classmates on the other hand thought he was a bit too strange and pompous for their liking.  I must admit there were times when it was obvious he had repeated certain jokes or stories, which was confirmed by Giorgio, an Italian student, who has been going on these same trips with the program for the past few years.  Overall, I think the count is a cross between the professor from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Gilderoy Lockhart from the Harry Potter series.  Either way he kept me interested.

When we got there the Count gave us a tour of the wine cellars, rooms with drying grapes, and a garden on the property.  We had a short wine tasting during the tour with two or three different wines, and what I thought was very impressive was the size of the barrels (shown on the left).  The room with the grapes was amazing because  they were starting to smell of fermentation.  It was similar to walking in an apple orchard will the fallen apples.

Lunch was simple, delicious, and classical Italian.  Tuscan bread (unsalted white bread), a plate of meats, olives, pickled peppers, artichokes, and what I think were small cooked tomatoes filled with tuna.  For dessert we had a choice between blueberry or apricot tarts. Yum.  After lunch we walked into town, and even though it was drizzling the landscape was gorgeous, with lots of fog rising out of the hills. 

San Gimignano

Our History & Anthropology class

The trip to San Gimignano was for my History and Anthropology class and this was my first trip without the entire group.  San Gimignano is a very well preserved, yet still functioning, medieval city that is characterized by their multiple stone towers.  During our visit we went to the town hall, Torre Grossa, which has the largest tower in San Gimignano.  Climbing to the top was one of the scariest things I’ve done because after climbing multiple levels of see-through metal stairs, you have to individually climb what can either be classified as the smallest, most inclined stairs ever, or a slightly reclined ladder.  Holy smokes it was interesting, but definitely worth it because the view from the top was so unbelievably beautiful.  It was picturesque.  Truly, it was like looking at the reality of what I had always imagined Tuscany to look like.  

View from the tower. Town square below with old water well.

After lunch we visited a beautiful little church with amazingly intact frescoes, but unfortunately I don't remember the name.  Then we went to a museum about the history of torture devices, with the original instruments on display.  This was slightly disturbing, but also very interesting, which I think made up for the occasional gag reflexes.  The last place we went to was a small museum that had a miniature sized replica of San Gimignano, which reminded me of the movie Beetlejuice.

The Boboli Gardens

My friend Emma and I ventured across the Arno to visit the Boboli Gardens after school one day.  SLC Florence provides every student with a museum pass that lets you gain access to a wide selection of museums in Florence for free.  Sweet deal, right?!  Sorry, way too excited.  Anyways, the Boboli Gardens are behind the Palazzo Pitti, which is essentially on the same street as the Ponte Vecchio.  It took us a little while to figure out where to get the entry tickets, and that this place was different than the actual entrance, but when we finally arrived it was incredible.  The day was unusually hot, which made it a bit uncomfortable because we had our heavy backpacks with us, but it was beautiful nonetheless.  When we got to the very top of the hill we could see most of Florence.  I imagine the view was even better when the trees were smaller.

Tomorrow my Italian class is flying to Catania, Sicily for the weekend to check out the university, so I will definitely take a lot of pictures and give a full report.  The post on the trips to Siena and Torino is coming soon! Arrivederci!

                                                            - CAB