Advertisement
Published: June 27th 2009
Edit Blog Post
My study abroad trip is over, and I'm in Rome for a while waiting for T.T. to come meet me. I'm sad to leave the comfort of a planned itinerary and the company of fellow UFers, but many more adventures are coming, so I'm also happy! Anyway, I was getting way too fat eating 5 course meals almost every night, and I was starting to itch for some alone time. Here's a brief overview from when I left off until now. Unfortunately, this computer also will not allow me to upload pictures...*Now I can upload pictures, but I forgot to bring my other memory card that has most of my pictures on it...
Venice
This was the first highly touristy area that we visited, and it was just that. Famous places in Italy are pretty much like a theme park except the rides are chruches, statues, and museums. (And therefore, less fun.) We had a free night and the next day in the city, which was plenty of time....
The train ride to Venice reminded me of Florida: flat with water. I like Venice for the fact that there are no cars in the city. However, there are also
Chianti Winery
Where we tasted a bit too much... no trees. Well, I think I counted 3. It is unique and interesting, and beautful in places, but I couldn't spend more than 1 or 2 days there without going through toursit overload and nature withdrawl.
We spent the night and day basically walking around and eating gelato. You could tell how touristy the area you were in based on the price of gelato, which ranged from 1 to 3 euros for 1 scoop, so we would scoff at 1.10 and keep walking until we found the lowest price. More dinner, we were begged by many a restaurant to eat there, and haggled our way into some good discounts. I tried cuttlefish with its own ink and polenta because it's a Venician dish, which looked gross but was actually pretty good.
Bologna
Bologna was our base for the agricultural university and many food visits. Cute, little Brunella from the University planned a bunch of activities for us. The city was very collegey and was actually the site of the first university in the world. They were supposed to have the largest catholic church in the world, but Rome got jealous and put the money towards a university instead.
Siena
After wine tasting and a rain storm. There was an amazing room where the first autopsies were performed. Here comes some major parphrasing.
Parmesan factory- traditional, smelly, impressive.
Ferrari museum- boring. I want to see a bike museum
Balsamic vinegar- amazingly thick a delicous! This family has been producing for over a hundred years, and the only ingredient is grape juice. They move the juice from different wooden barrels get different flavors. We tasted one that was 30 years old, and one that was 100 years old. Don't worry, you'll get to taste some. I bought 2 bottles.
Produce market- a giant market to connect produce buyers and sellers. I wanted to eat everything.
Dairy Factory- more intense smells, but really cool to see all the machinery making bottles, filling them up, etc. Raw and fresh milk a pretty popular here, but seems to be too natural and fresh for our americanized tatses.
Parma ham- Where they make prosciutto. Giant raw ham legs, seasoned with salt and dryed and aged for over a year, then sliced thin a eaten raw. Thousands and thousands of hanging legs. I didn't recognize the smell as meat, but it still made me nauseous.
Castle-
Tuscan Agrotourismo
It was in the middle of nowhere, which was inconvenient when we had to drive to many different destination, but it was scenic. I don't quite remember the name, but this was one of my favorite places. It had so much history that was still alive and preserved. It used to be long to royalty but now there has been a family living there for 140 years. It had original paintings and furniture from the 1700s. An outdoor wall looked like it had grafetti on it, but it was actually a sort of diary of the house, written by inhabitants and visitors over ther years. One entry said that a friend visited to hunt with the family, then beheaded the entire family to take over the castle. There was also a mummy and a ghost of a good fairy that was protected in life from the inquisition by the family in the castle. Now they say she protects the castle, and use the fact that there was no damage from the recent earthquake as proof. As the lady was talking about here ghost, a door slammed shut on itàs own. OoOoO...
Pisa- another tourist central, just full of people taking those classic pictures.
chianti wine- A really beautiful winery where tasting turned into drinking about a bottle each. That's a good
Gelato
An exceptional gelato shop in Florence with probably 50 or more flavors. I went there twice within one hour because I had to try more. way to get poeple to buy too much there.
Siena- Right after the wine tasting, so it was a bit of a blur for everyone. And it was pouring rain...
Florence- We didn't get as much time as we should have because of some transportation issues, but I did see David and some other famous art works. Super touristy, again.
I left out a few things, and there will be plenty of time for expansion later. I'm writing this down in a diary so I wont forget.
One note about food here- A lot of it is protected by DOP or another thing that I'll remember later. Basically, it preserves the quality, geographic region, and traditional production of each product, like parmesan Reggiano cheese for example. What you buy at the store from Kraft is not real. It's not allowed to be called parmesan. The only ingredients allowed are milk, renet, and salt. More on that later.
A Rome update is next, and that will be a good one.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.448s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 18; qc: 70; dbt: 0.089s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb