Three Days in One!

So, the weekend was pretty slow.  There were no classes or planned trips, so it was just spent doing what we wanted to on an individual basis.  The most exciting thing this weekend was the opening of the Medieval Festival.  Although not nearly as grand in scale as the Renaissance fests in the states, none of them are in a bona fide Medieval castle... or actually in Italy with Italians.  Though all of the shopkeepers/ food vendors/ performers were dressed up in proper garb, most, if not all, of the guests were dressed in modern attire. Small shops selling jewelry, pottery, prints, and swords both hand-made and (I think) mass produced are in an area around an archery field.  On the other side of a wall is the area with all of the food, including a whole boar, with its head on display and tiny birds rotisseries over a fire, drinks, and tons of tables with benches to sit at. 

In a third area a little camp is set up and there are stairs that lead up to the central tower where, for 1.50 € you can climb some rickety stairs for a view of the fair and the entire town and valley.  I have yet to make the climb.  It's a lot of stairs.  Ann says she may get us a tour of it later on in the trip.

We aren't served lunch at Santa Chiara on the weekends, so this weekend was (unintentionally) the lunch at the town's pizzerias themed.  Saturday we went to Sfizzeria, a grab and go slice place with many choices for very little cost, 1.30 € - 1.50 € each.  I had a slice of basic Margherita fresh from the oven which was fantastic.  Sunday we had lunch at Roggio's which is a sit-down restaurant that sells a lot of pizza but we all opted for pasta.  I had the pici with boar sauce I mentioned Ann having when we were in Florence.  It was very delicious.

 Dinner Saturday was nice.  The primi was pasta with tomatoes and olives, very nice and light.  The main dish was a really flavorful roast pork loin with roasted potato wedges and a light salad of thinly sliced vegetables... which I didn't each much of because one of the main vegetables was fennel, which they use a lot of here.  Sunday's primi was pasta in a spicy tomato sauce followed by the main course of roasted chicken with french fries.  Not the best but different.  It was followed by our second dessert, in honor of someone's birthday, a cake of some sort that was very yellow and delicious.

Saturday's lovely gelato flavors were peach and lemon (a repeat) which was a refreshing flavor combination.  It was happily eaten sometime between lunch and dinner.

Sunday was the first gelato disappointment I've had since I've been here... I didn't get any.  I was completely unable to get a trip up to the shop into my schedule.  I did, however, have a really nice pastry at Hermes, a cafe next door to Roggio's.  It was an interesting oval shape, with a rim, with a thin layer of apricot (?) jam and some slices of pear.  It was eaten quite happily shortly after lunch.

Today we had our first (and only) quiz, for which we needed to learn to recognize fifty different important buildings, paintings, frescoes, statues, etc... I found it to be pretty easy.  We prepped for our trip to Siena tomorrow, and went over our chosen ten images from our trip to Florence last week.  We voted on them to pick our favorites and one of my images was one of the top nine.

Lunch today was a really nice rice and vegetable soup followed by baked white fish with cold green beans in a vinaigrette dressing and fried vegetables. Dinner started with  short penne noodles in a cream sauce with pieces of sausage and vegetables which was followed by very thinly sliced beef that had been cooked somehow and was served covered in tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese.  It was served with green peas that were very buttery and delicious.

Today's gelato was a bit of a change.  Strawberry, which is nothing new for me, but it was topped with a creamy ice cream called variegato amarena, which I think is something like vanilla topped with cherry sauce though the translation just means variegated cherry.  The cherries were very tart and delicious.

Tomorrow is Siena, home of my patron saint, I suppose.  Apparently her head is on display somewhere in the city.  We'll be taking our only chartered bus there, as it's difficult to get there from here.  We leave at 7:30 AM and are staying through dinner.

Sorry about the gap in posts, I'll try to avoid such a long break to avoid posts this long in the future.

Arezzo, the City Next Door

Today was, as I mentioned yesterday, the city of Arezzo.  I heard someone say it has a population of about 78K people, which is several times larger than Castiglion but not nearly as large as Florence.  We took the 9:15 bus over, stopped for coffee and tiny sandwiches (they had the coffee, I had the sandwiches) and went to explore the town's three churches.  The first was the Pieve Santa Maria, which had some very nice stained glass including this one, which has bits that remind me of Frank Lloyd Wright's glass.

After, we went to our 11 and 11:30 (the class was split in two) vistits to see the True Cross Fresco in the Church of San Francesco.  Photography was strictly forbidden.  The frescoes were very interesting and unusual, and were very beautiful.

Afterwards, we headed off for lunch.  Seven of us, including our professors went to the small trattoria pictured here.  Everyone was pleased with their lunch.  I had ravioli stuffed with cheese and spinach served in a creamy sauce.  The foccacia served with the meal was fresh with a hint of saltiness and the variety of dishes was intriguing.  Besides the usual pizza and pasta, they offer boar, fresh mushrooms, and giant spaghetti noodles called pici.

After lunch, we didn't need to meet back again until our tour of Arezzo's Duomo at three, so we headed back towards the bus station where the lovely La Violetta Gelateria stands.  Not a lot of flavors to choose from, but some very unusual ones.  Today I had cacio e pere, which is a sort of soft cheese with pear, according to Ann, and my first repeated flavor, frutti di bosco, mixed berries.

After gelato we headed for Duomo San Donato, Arezzo's huge cathedral.  It's home to some amazing woodwork, stonework, frescoed ceilings, and a beautiful set of organ pipes (below).  The light inside was really low so even switching to my 1.8 lens didn't help entirely.  I ended up taking a bunch of photos of the ceiling using the lens on the floor, my remote shutter release, and a one second exposure.  The following two images were taken in the same place and light but they're very different due to the exposure length. 

The last stop before heading back to the bus and Castiglion was a small shop we'd passed a couple of times before called "The Magic of Oz" (but in Italian) that is home to all sorts of little figurines of faeries and Disney characters.  I took a brief look around it with Nick, Ann's younger son, and on the way out, noticed a tic-tac-toe set that matched my collection of little sheepies at home.  I asked the shopkeeper if they had any individual ones, and she took me to where they had a single one left.  A sheep standing on his hind legs with a shepherd's crook in his hand.  Perfect, I thought, for my little flock at home and he was only 4.50 Euros.  He's sitting on my shelf in front of my photos of my family.

Dinner tonight wasn't the best but wasn't bad by any metric.  Bow-tie pasta in a slightly spicy creamy tomato sauce followed by sauteed vegetables and chicken marsala, which had a lot of really nice mushrooms.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the Renaissance festival!  Much fun will be had by all.

Catch Up Part Two

The movie was very enjoyable and not nearly as long as I'd feared.  Following it we had a short crash course in Italian and then a very enjoyable dinner.  Pasta carbonara, which was delicious and tasted like pasta covered with cheese but was actually egg yolks and had small pieces of pancetta.  The meat course was beautifully roasted chicken in a lemony olive oil sauce with olives and (I think) anchovy paste which was served with buttered peas and carrots.  All were well received by everyone at the table.

I know I just posted an image of the view down the hill but I thought I'd include one that was actually out my window, shot this afternoon with some malevolent clouds hanging in the distance.  You can see the small plaza where we meet, with the dining hall through the door on the left and the art studios through the one on the right.  The plaza is home to four small tortoises who are native to the area, apparently and quite free to wander around as they like.  I'll try to include an image of them when I get one.  They're oddly elusive considering their limited realm.  The climbing vines covering the stairwells at the end of the plaza are the jasmine I mentioned in an earlier post.  Many of the lighter colored trees closer in are olive trees, as it seems they make olive oil locally.

Today's flavors are green apple and grapefruit.  The former had a nice strong bite and the later a smoothness with a bit of tang.  Very refreshing.  I'm afraid I'm starting to run out of the lighter fruit flavors, so I may have to resort to some of the creamier ones if I wish to avoid repeating. 
Darn.

Tomorrow is the nearby city of Arezzo.  Much larger than our town of 12 K but not quite on the level of Florence.  We'll be taking a bus at 9 AM and touring throughout the day.  Apparently Fridays are also market day here in Castiglion and the food on offer there is delicious.  I'm sure breakfast will be wonderful.

A domani.

Catching Up on Sleep... and Images

So, I feel that, other than my daily gelato I've been remiss in putting images in this blog so, since there's nothing going on today that's interesting at all, I'll do it now.  I'll post my dinner report and gelato later tonight as neither have happened yet.

This is a shot from the hill housing San Miniato looking down over Florence at the Duomo and Campanile. The smaller dome on the left partially hidden by the tall Campanile is the Baptistry.

This isn't the view out my window, but it's quite similar to it.  This is the valley below the town proper of Castiglion Fiorentino including the soccer field and swimming pool.

There are flowers blooming all over the place including roses in an amazing variety of color, poppies, and an abundance of jasmine very similar to our confederate jasmine at the house.

Time to head to photography class.  We're watching the film Good Night and Good Luck today.  I'm sure the reasoning will become clear after I've seen it.

Florence I

Today was our first day trip!  We were told to be at the local train station no later than 6:45 AM so that we could catch the fast train in.  Though I set my alarm for 5:45, my internal alarm, or something external I'm not aware of, decided that I should wake up at five.  Considering I didn't manage to get to sleep until midnight due to my very chatty roommate, this didn't leave me with much sleep.  Then the train was twenty minutes late and not an express.  Italy is odd like that.

First stop was San Miniato al Monte, a stunning church looking down on the city from one of the surrounding hilltops.  We spent a good amount of time taking photographs inside.  I did so with the Bach Magnificat in my ears setting the mood in a very fitting way.  The challenge was to not sing along.  I managed it... most of the time... and only ever so quietly if I failed.

After that was a long walk down winding roads back to the Ponte Vecchio, or old bridge,  across the Arno, which is the only bridge in Florence that predates the German retreat in WWII (thank you, Wikipedia).  It's covered with jewelry shops and tons of tourists.

Continuing our tour back towards the center of town, we entered the Orsanmichele, a rather small church with a very large tabernacle housing a painting of the Madonna and Child, which apparently cures the sick of their ailments (or, at least, did so during the plague).  It was guarded by a small woman with a loud voice who wasn't ever afraid to tell people not to take photographs.  I offered a .50 Euro coin for a small votive to light in front of it.

Finally we were able to run off and find some food.  I think everyone was pretty starved.  We'd grabbed snacks before catching the train and shortly after we arrived but much walking was done and it was time for something more substantial.  I wandered off with the Ann and Lawrence, our professors, Erica, Lawrence's TA, and Ann's two grown sons who are on the trip with us to find a panini shop that Lawrence had heard great things about.  We split up there, with Lawrence and Erica staying for a sandwich and the rest of us went to find some pasta or pizza.  The result wasn't great.  Ann and one of her sons had pizza that they deemed inedible, although my torteloni in butter and sage wasn't horrid and her other son seemed happy with his pasta ragu.  

The gelato afterward was much better.  Apparently, Italians think it's odd to get just a single flavor of gelato, so I'll be trying two each day, as I have so far.  Festival Del Gelato was amazing!  They had at least fifty flavors to choose from with a variety of milk, cream, and sorbetto flavors, all of which were decorated to show off their contents.  The colors were so rich and beautiful and I had a difficult time choosing.  I decided to go with one of my favorite combinations, raspberry and mango.  Be sure that I'll be visiting again on our next two forays to Florence.

After lunch we stared at the huge Duomo di Firenze, (the Basilica di Santa Maria  del Fiore) and the Baptistery and Campanile (bell tower) in front of and beside it and spent more time taking photos.  We should be entering it's great dome, known as Brunelleschi's Dome after it's architect, on one of our later trips.

After wandering around for a bit afterward, we headed back to the train station for the 5 PM train and rush hour traffic back to Castiglion Fiorentino.  Dinner tonight was penne rigatte in a light oil sauce with fresh tomatoes and Parmesan cheese followed by a simple salad and thinly sliced roast beef (rare or well done) and some divine mashed potatoes.  We had an actual dessert tonight rather than the usual fruit, something they call chocolate salami.  Which is sort of indescribable but tastes a lot like chocolate fudge and has little bits of sweet cookie, perhaps something like ladyfingers, mixed in to be the salami "fat".

The post dinner time was taken up with sorting through images from today, some minor editing, and the blog, of course!  Now it's 12:30 and plenty late for bed.  Until tomorrow!

Walking Tour

Missed breakfast, late for intro, tuna salad oddness for lunch (probably delicious if you actually like tinned tuna), no real seat in our photo intro because there are more people than chairs in the class.  That was all the not so great stuff.  Now that that's out of the way, gorgeous day, spent walking around Castiglion Fiorentino and seeing what it has to offer; which is odd, beautiful, and interesting things to photograph.  Roses, architecture, and vistas are all on offer.

Started the day with a quick wake-up to go to a brief intro that I wasn't aware of, so I was late and didn't know where it was.  Sat through another brief intro by the people who run the facility which was a bit dry.  Then an hour to walk around town, see all the shops that were closed for their mid-day siesta and head back to listen to an intro to photography.  Then more free time and more walking around.  Lunch was in there somewhere between walking and camera intros... not sure where.  Nothing to say about lunch. Dinner was much better: spiral pasta in a cheesy pesto sauce (no cream!), fresh vegetables in oil and parsley, and roasted pork with lots of herbs.

The gelato(es) for the day from the same local gelatteria as yesterday, which I now know is called Coco Palm... lemon and a berry blend called fruiti di bosce or something like that, literally fruits of the forest.  Very bright and clean for the late afternoon.

Here at Last!

I have managed to actually arrive in Italy, find my fellows and get to our housing... without losing anything, missing any flights, trains, or stops or getting lost.  No sleep on the plane or train but a two hour nap after getting to the room helped me feel more real after all the travel.  It's just after 10 PM now and I can barely stay awake although tonight's dinner of spaghetti with a spicy tomato sauce and roasted turkey with some simple yet flavorful steamed spinach helped me feel more stable.  Dinner is served nightly at 7:30 PM and I hear rumors that they rarely repeat, so this should be a gastrointestinally pleasing six weeks.

The food on the plane wasn't worth discussing but at the Rome Termini train station I was happy to have a simple panini from a chain that was much more pleasing, with better ingredients, better than any sub shop in the states.  Prosciutto, mozzarella, lettuce, and tomato pressed inside a soft braided roll.

Our room isn't as cramped as you might expect, although the bathroom and shower stall are very tight.  I will say that we have a fabulous view.  Our windows look out over the center's plaza and out to the rolling hills beyond the city's football field.  I'll be sure to post some images when I feel more alive.

Today's flavor, from the local gelatteria, was half and half pineapple and strawberry.  Very fruity and refreshingly light after a long day and a half.

I'm Up.

Didn't take much.  I did manage to get some sleep last night but it took a little while to get there and no alarm to wake up, just the cheerful conversation of an NPR interviewer talking to a man about mathematics and God.  I had a cat warming my feet, Andy at my back, and a shower in my future. 

Time to finish packing, say goodbye to the furball, and head out for those promised tacos.  I'm thinking of the very un-breakfast-y "Democrat" and maybe a more traditional "Monk's Special".

Packing Done

Everything is packed except for my laptop and the necessities I'll need in the morning. Plans tomorrow include grabbing cash and Torchy's for some last meal tacos. The last night in Austin, sad and short or excited and unending, who knows. The morning will tell. My 11 AM flight leaves me time to prepare but not to dwell on the departure too much. Must remember to call mom and dad before I leave.

Tonight was quiet. Dinner at NXNW and Shrek # 4 in 3D.

Off to be a little spoon for the last time for six weeks.