The Weekend #2

Oh, gosh... where did I leave off... Friday?... and it's Wednesday now.  That means I've got about 4-1/2 days to make up for... let's make it five.  So... Saturday was a pretty slow day, got up late after being exhausted from Florence and went to a little place in Castiglion for lunch where you get your food by the pound as if it's a deli, although I suppose that's sort of what it was.  I got a quarter of chicken and some peas in butter sauce which were both very good for just over 6 euro, not bad, I thought.  

After that, we walked, and walked... and walked in search of the other gelato place in town.  It was a long walk.  One of the girls kept getting cat calls and whistles and honks and looks from the guys driving along the road, so we started counting.  By the time we finished what we guessed was a four mile walk round trip, she'd racked up fifteen of them, not counting general looks.  Oh, and the gelato was good but I guess we decided it wasn't worth the walk, although the A&Mers seem to go wild for it.

That's about all of interest that happened that day.  I don't remember what we had for dinner that night, I think the Santa Chiara dinners just seem to blend together.  I'm sure it was good.

Sunday a bunch of us got up early to catch a train to Arezzo for their first-weekend-of-the-month Antique Fair.  I wandered around on my own for a while.  I noticed one of the living statues preparing for the day, putting on his makeup while sitting on his podium.  There was a good deal of very nice furniture that I'm sure my mom would have liked, a lot of jewelry, pottery, rugs, paintings... quite the mish-mash of stuff, though I didn't end up buying anything.  There was also a lot of stuff that wasn't actually antique, including other jewelry, art, and little collectibles like the kitties below.  I'm not sure they serve any purpose, but they looked funny hanging on the line like that.

I didn't last there long and took the noon bus back to Castiglion Fiorentino... it lets us off at the top of the hill, which is helpful.  Went to Roggi's for lunch and had a pizza and then went back to Santa Chiara to pack for our departure to Rome just before eight the next morning.  After that I read for a bit.  I finished Twilight Watch on either Saturday or Sunday, so was reading the final book, Last Watch, which I'm almost finished with, now.

Shortly before our 6 PM pre-departure meeting, I found out that Ann wanted our two-page reading response paper before we left for Rome, so my plan to do it during the long weekend wasn't going to fly... so I was anxious to get enough of the book read to respond to the prompts properly and get it written later that night.

When we got down to dinner, we were surprised to see spoons, as we generally only have soup at lunch and have pasta for dinner but we had both.  Sausage and cheese tortellini floating in beef broth.  Interesting, but good.  The main course was roasted chicken and beef served with a fresh salad and mashed potatoes.

After dinner I scanned the prompts for their subject and started reading the text for the answers.  I don't think I did too badly, in the end, although I did take a break before writing my conclusion paragraph to go up the the medieval festival for the last time to watch their fireworks show.  It was rumored around Santa Chiara that they'd spent 10K euro on them, which didn't sound too impressive to me, as I know that the municipal shows for New Year's and the Fourth can often run several hundred thousand and up.

Maybe it was the location, maybe just a company that gives them a great deal, but the display lasted for at least twenty minutes and it was phenomenal.  They shot the fireworks around the castle's tower, some from a small section inside the inner walls, behind the tower, and others in front of the walls and the tower, so the explosions lit up the tower and framed it, emphasizing the shapes of the wall, tower, and open space.  At one point, there was even a cascade of white sparks coming down from the top of the tower like a waterfall, which lasted for a good 2-3 minutes on its own, with other fireworks going off in the background.  They had a plethora of my favorite types of fireworks and none of the gigantic orbs so prevalent in the States, which I find pedantic and boring. They were also predominantly white with gold, and tended to use color sparingly, which I found much more interesting and far prettier.

Afterwards, I'd pretty much decided that I'd never seen a city-funded display that I'd liked better than this and that it was necessary for me to come back again in the hopes that they'd do something as good in the future.  Then I wrote the conclusion to my paper, emailed it to Ann, and went off to dreamland.