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Published: October 9th 2011
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This past weekend we woke up very early on Saturday to make it to the train station by 8 AM. We once again lugged our suitcases on a half hour walk across the city, which would not have been so bad if there had been a Dunkin Donuts waiting for us at the train station! We boarded our bus with all of the other Bentley students and in less than an hour we had reached our first destination of Arezzo.
Before we started our walking tour, we were able to grab a quick cappuccino and croissant. One of the teachers from LDM then brought us on a 2 hour tour of the town. We saw many churches (possibly too many), the house of Petrarch who wrote the original love sonnet, and the house of Guido Monaco who invented modern music notes. After our tour, we had an hour of free time and we were able to walk around on our own. Every first Saturday of the month Arezzo hosts a famous antiques fair and people come from all over to set up their tables. Me and Kelly searched through all of the jewelry at the tables in hopes of finding
a cameo ring that was within our budget but unfortunately had no luck. We also got to see some of the locations where they filmed the movie Life is Beautiful. Afterwards, we grabbed a piece of pizza and headed towards our next stop, Cortona.
The bus dropped us off in front of our hotel room in Cortona which happened to have one of the best views of the Tuscan countryside we've seen yet. We rested for a little while and then met up with our tour guide for our next walking tour. Luckily, this tour started out with a giant gelato! We didn't realize exactly what we were in store for as we started heading up the stairs. The theme of the tours on this trip was "When in doubt of where to go, head upwards." We walked uphill for at least 45 minutes and reached the top to find...another church! The view was beautiful and we stopped to take some pictures and then walked upwards for another 15 minutes and got to see a medieval fortress. We had about an hour until dinner but there was one stop we needed to see first, the house where they filmed
Under the Tuscan Sun! We got dressed very quickly and started to walk towards the house but it was a lot further than we thought. We eventually found 2 houses, but both had people living in them and we're still not sure which one it was!
Dinner was unbelievable. Everyone was very dressed up and we were served at least 6 different courses, flan, two types of pasta, fried vegetables, veal, and green apple gelato with strawberries for dessert. After dinner, all of the Bentley students went to sit on the stairs where some of Under the Tuscan sun was filmed and we drank wine and chatted.
On Saturday morning we woke up, ate breakfast, and got back on the bus towards Pienza. Pienza is a very small town and we were there for less than an hour. The town is known for Pecorino cheese, which is made from sheep's milk and we obviously had to try some. Afterwards we went to a local farm where they produce the Pecorino and we went on a tour of the factory and afterwards were treated to a giant buffet of all of the different types of cheese, salami, prosciutto, bread
and olive oil. The owner of the farm told us that the cheese will stay good until far past December so we all purchased the kind that we liked the best to bring home for our families in December.
Once we had finished, we got on the bus for our final stop of Montepulciano. I was the most excited about this town because it was where they filmed New Moon! We saw a lot of the sites where they filmed it and it just so happens that they had also filmed part of it at the winery we were going on a tour of! The town of Montepulciano is best known for Vino Nobile and we got to see the wine cellar of Cantina del Redi, a wine cellar that has been featured on various travel shows. Afterwards, we got to taste the wines and people were able to purchases which one they liked the best.
We got on the bus around 6 and were back in Florence before 8. I'm so happy we were able to do this tour with the school because it would have been much more difficult to visit these places on our own.
This past week we've mostly been going to classes and studying because midterms are coming up! There hasn't been that much work to do here until now which has been a nice break from all of the homework and stress at Bentley. Today we finally made it to Gusta Pizza, a place across the river that all of the past study abroad students have told us to go to. It was definitely worth the walk, the pizza was delicious! Tonight I'm planning on getting food somewhere around here and then doing homework and looking at internship possibilities for this summer, I can't believe deadlines are already starting to come up and it's only October! Only 12 more days until we leave for our eurotrip!
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