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.