Truffle Hunting and Mall Shopping, in the same day

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So, they told us to wear comfortable clothes -- so for me: jean skirt, sandals, the typical. Oh no. Bad Idea. We go truffle hunting, and with our luck (as with every day) it rained. So we are trekking up this muddy muddy hill (definitely a hill compared to the Sibillini) to find this delicacy: il tartufo. If there is one thing I am going to teach the world, it is that truffles are MUSHROOMS. The chocolate truffle is made to looking like the mushroom. So, we were hunting for the mushroom, not the piece of candy. After we came back down from the hunting site (thanks to the rather tall gentleman with the huge blue umbrella -- who helped me down the hill under the umbrella arm-in-arm), we made it to the house, where we cleaned off in the garage area. After maybe ten minutes, the older gentleman (the father of the main hunter) came into the garage area with his home-made wine. We all were able to taste it and it was good, but it had a few too many tannins for my taste. It reminded me of my Dad's wine, when he made it from the wild grapes. Just a bit tart, but still good. From here, we drove back into Acqualagna, has a truffle-processing factory tour, and then a tasting party at the truffle store. After our Acqualagna/Truffle(MUSHROOM) hunting excursion came to a close, we ventured to the town of Ancona to shop at the mall there. Most of my purchases actually came from here too: books and cds! well worth it! I am now in LOVE with my Zero Assoluto CD. Second best Italian purchase. After my shopping tolerance (which is rather low) was spent, we returned to the hotel, where we made another trip to the Adriatic (oh, how I miss you and your painful rocks). We had dinner (at which the Italian National Basketball team was having their first). GianCarlo had promised to take us all to a bar that night via the bus, so that night we went to Rockaway, where we met a few guys, had some interesting convos, and had an overall good time. We left pretty early though, and went back to the hotel. It was a memorable way to spend our last night in Numana.

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