So, I know I haven't been keeping up with this blog business very well. Ok, well I haven't been keeping up with it at all. Italian internet is sketchy at best. Especially if you're trying to upload photos. I guess the last post was about a month ago now. Therefore, this one is going to be extra long. Hopefully, I can get through it before the internet poops out again. Photos take forever to upload on here so check out my facebook for those.
Arezzo - About 10 minutes north of Castiglion Fiorentino is the city of Arezzo. This was where we took our first trip to. It was ok. We saw a bunch of churches and frescoes. By the end of the trip I'm probably going to be burnt out on classical art. The highlight of the trip was our tour guide, Giovanni. He owns a toy store in Cortona (I'll get to Cortona next) and freelances as a tour guide on the side. Apparently, it's crazy hard to become a tour guide in Italy. Something about having to memorize thousands of different artists, paintings, and be able to recognize pieces based on small images of them. Anyways, Giovanni was pretty cool. Between docents about paintings and sculptures he would make jokes about his mother and wife, some of them inappropriate, inside churches, which made them better.
Cortona - I've been to Cortona a couple times now. A little side note about Cortona, it's crazy tall and steep. If you've seen the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun", that was filmed here. The town is about 15 minutes by bus from Castiglion, so, easy to get to. The first time we, ( by we I mean a few people, we haven't been to Cortona as a group yet), we attempted to get to the top of the hill. We were unsuccessful because we got about halfway and had to turn around to catch a bus back. A funny little thing also happened when we arrived. We went to a tabacchi (a tobacco shop) to get our bus tickets back and after we purchased them we starting looking at some sketchbooks on the shelves. The guy behind the counter tells us to go down the steps in the back of his shop, little weird but we decide to go anyways. Apparently in the bottom of this unassuming tobacco shop was a high quality art gallery and supply shop. The guy working downstairs was really friendly and new English well. He told us that one of his old shop assistants had been from Kansas. Small world.
The second time we went to Cortona we made it to the top. That was pretty cool. Besides scaling the mini mountain that day we played on a little playground during siesta time when nothing is ever open. That's about it on Cortona, for now.
Florence - I could probably right a small novel on Florence by now having been 3 or 4 times over the past few weeks. Seen all the major sites, won't bore you with the details. Favorite church here is San Miniato on a hill overlooking Florence. The "RC's" showed us this really good panini place on one of the trips. I'm beginning to think that the best places to go in Italy are the most unassuming looking ones. The panini place is literally a four foot long bar built into the side of a building with two guys working behind it. One guy cranking out sandwiches and another taking orders. The only other major thing I've done here was go to a chocolate festival. It was pretty cool. I'm sure the women reading this will think my description of "pretty cool" is not sufficient. This thing had all sorts of stuff though. I tried chocolate beer which tasted like, well, beer mostly. There was a wide variety of chocolate bars from spicy pepper to marijuana flavored (don't be shocked there wasn't any THC in them). The craziest thing we did that day was take absinthe shots from chocolate shot glasses. A little piece of advice, don't put the whole thing in your mouth all at once. Drink the liquid then eat the glass, otherwise you'll end up standing there with absinthe hanging around in your mouth because you're unable to swallow the whole thing.
Something else that was pretty cool in Florence is the MuseoGalileo. One of our professors works here as well as teaching us the history of science and technology. He happens to be named Giovanni also. We've had two classes in the museum. During one of them he brought out a collection of really old books and actually let us touch them. Surprising considering the things were from the 15th and 16th centuries making them, oh, somewhere in the ballpark of 400 years old. That's older than the United States if you need a reference.
Ok so I"m about halfway through here. Orvietto, Sienna, and the Milan excursion still to come. Stay tuned.
