Florence

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I got off the train in Florence and imidiately I felt I liked Italy better, I do no know what it was but I could feel I was going to like this city. I got to my hostel and it was very Americanized, or I guess Aussied since most guests like most backpackers were from oz. I was pitched a wine tour by the tour office there and for the cheap hostel price I thought it was a good chance and I stept aboad. That afternoon I walked most the city and saw the sunset from the high point of the city which would be hardly concidered a hill in switzerland. It was nice to see the city from above. The plazas and the famous bridge there were my favorite. The bridge was like a fat little city over a river that only sold jewlery. I meet some cool people at the hostel and we had a drink on the rooftop bar that had a pretty good view for a hostel. The next day the wine tour was on. We started to walk to the bus and ran into delays since the workers were having a protest in the street. That was interesting to see to say the least. We walked more than was planned to get to the bus bu go on with our little Italian woman tour guide. She was hillarious and made jokes and pointed out thing to us that were let's say tailored to the youth hostel crowd. I meet some more Aussies and a kiwi on the bus and we went around our first stop that was San Giomani. This town was a little fort on a hill and was home to gellato place that won best in show foe the last two years. There were lots of meat place with hairly shanks of boar, yum! The town was also home to many towers with a story behind them. I guess there were about 30 origanaly and each family would build a tower to show heir wealth and power. The contiualy got taller and some were added to as could be seen by the change in bricks. I thought it was a interesting Freudian aspect of the town and the male labido. We than made it to our first tasting and saw all the machinery and vines on a little viniard. We tried wine and had a merry time. We tried the traditional wine of the region that had to have 90% of the local grape. We also had a great view back on the town of San Giomani. We then made it to a wine tasting school where our hillarious teacher Luigi gave us the run down on wine and how to taste it. We were to look at our weewee as we smelled not the person's across from us weewee. We also tried a 30 year old basalmic vinigar and truffel oil, each of which I thought were really good. The wine we tried here were called super tuscans since they were mixed with other grapes and they were GREAT! I wish I could have gotten some but that is not i  the cards for a backpacker. I got back and had dinner with the girls I meet and we were planning on having a night on the town but after a long day of drinking we wall hit the wall and did not make it out. In all I had a great time but now am off to see if Rome was built in a day I ran into some of the Aussies at the  train station and am not riding along.    

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