where they make the cheese!

Today was perhaps one of the most pleasant days we’ve had since we’ve been here! The majority of my BC group is in either Rome or Lucca, and there are five of us currently in the hotel. WHICH IS SWEET. Last night we went to a very silly Americanized bar that had Italian and English karaoke, which was really amusing to watch. My favorite person who went up was this giant man with long blond hair and ridiculous sideburns who sang Madonna with his twiggy little friend. Also some man sang the theme song to an Italian cartoon, which confused everyone who was not Italian. GTs all around.

TODAY we had plans to go to Greve, the capital of the Chianti region, and rent bikes, taste some wine, wander around, fly by the seat of our pants. The bus that we were on, however, was really confusing and we could not tell for the life of us what stop we were at ever. We thought we missed the Greve stop at least 4 times, and these three American girls in the seats ahead of us heard us talking and told us to just get off at Panzano like they were doing, because there was a wine tasting festival going on. We quickly agreed, because that was what we were looking for and it sounded much more organized than anything we were going to do.

We got off at Panzano and immediately knew it was perfect. You paid for a glass (which you got to take home) and got a list of the wineries and types of wine that were around, and then went up to the stands and tried whatever you wanted! It was really fun, especially since we had no idea what we were doing, so we would listen to the sommeliers describe what kind of grapes were in it and how old it was and then we would just pick at random. We had absolutely no notes to write down but we knew what we liked. There was also a cheese man with the BEST CHEESE IN THE WORLD. It was so fresca and milky and delicious. I think it was a pecorino cheese.

There were tons of Americans there; a lot of older couples who had come to Italy for this specific festival. Surprisingly, we met a lot of people from Chicago, which was nice. Everyone was so friendly and made fun of us for not knowing what we were doing. We talked to this one couple from Chicago who seemed insistent that we actually get to Munich for Octoberfest – the older man offered to drive us there haha. We did a lot of walking around and looking at the beautiful vineyards on the countryside and it was so pretty. The weather was gorgeous and it was a very fun, relaxed day.

Tonight (for real this time) we’re getting gelato at this famous gelateria, Vivoli. It’s supposedly the best gelateria in Firenze, so we’ll see how it measures up.

Ciao belle!