Blogs from Lucca, Tuscany, Italy, Europe - page 10

After careful planning for 6 adults and 7 children we rented this large Villa overlooking the town of Lucca. Villa Torianni. Pool, large living space, plenty of sleeping quarters. We used it as base to tour Tuscany. Returning the last day before the other families and tired from a fabulous 3 week trip we relaxed and began to pack. it was our last night. The other couples had one additional day. The care taker had said the strange man in the apartment in the villa was his father in-law. Right! Villa Toriani has no safes in the rooms, it is located on a road to a winery where there is regular local traffic. I went to the pool with the kids while my wife was packing. She came to the pool for 15 minutes to wake ... read more

Hello all, Busy busy busy...we left our home stays and said fond farwells to all our gracious hosts and hostesses. Onward to Cannes: Group picture time on the stairs of where the Cannes film festival is held. Pretty exciting to know that we walked in a place where so many famous people have been. One could sure tell that the rich and famous travel through this area. Yachts the size of ocean liners, (well almost) and helicoptors that bring people to their mansions. We went for a late afternoon bowling party and dinner, then to our hotel. UP early as usual, then proceeded to Monaco and learned the history of the Grimaldi family, the world's oldest monarchy. One square mile of land with 7,000 Monaconese people. To be a citizen you have to have parents that ... read more

On Wednesday morning we watched Parmigiano Reggiano being made, a process that has gone on daily since 1200. The cheesemaker combines untreated milk from the morning milking with partly skimmed milk delivered the evening before in large copper vats. After adding whey from the previous day along with a natural enzyme, the milk curdles. It is cooked for a few minutes while the cheese solids seperate from the liquid and fall to the bottom of the vat. The cheese is lifted from the vat and placed in forms for a couple of days before being immersed in a saturated sea-salt solution for 20 days to add flavour and permit long aging. The cheeses are then stored on wooden shelves in a large refridgerated warehouse where they are turned and brushed every week, for 24 months or ... read more

Well I guess it's time for an update. Tracie and Jawan (my two friends from LSU, we all auditioned in Chicago for this program that we are attending) are finally here. And things have just been getting better and better. Today the program started (thank goodness, time has been going so slow). I met a bunch of the music people here (music people are unique, a kind of their own. I don't personally consider myself a TRUE music major, because I think in order to be that I need to have a worse sense of humor and maybe snort a lot when I laugh...?) but they are nice. I'm not in a hard core Italian mood. All I want to do is learn Italian, so when I hear English I try to block it out. Although ... read more

Day Two: Day two went much better than day one, but it also had its ups and downs. I was lucky enough to get the hostel room full of girls who just love to wake up at 7 in the morning. That was a pleasant little mini alarm clock. So I woke up, and gave mom a ring. I knew it was only one in the morning there, but I pretended like I forgot. (haha) We had a good chat, and then I showered and got ready for the day. We had to return our keys to our hostel rooms at 10 am. After that, me and David just chilled in the hostel common room. I looked at some music, wrote Day one of this story, and then I fell asleep on the couch for about ... read more