Cortona

Monday, we went to visit Cortona, the neighboring town of Castiglion Fiorentino. Being so close we had to make time to go there at least once before leaving Italy. Cortona is well known for having beautiful scenery and the filming location of the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. It definitely lived up to our expectations as many students who had taken day trips there had loved Cortona and raved about it. It is a little bit bigger town than Castiglion Fiorentino and also home to a few universities.

main piazza

a lot of interesting doors

view from Cortona

Then back at Santa Chiara our professor had us haul our sticks up the steepest hill in Castiglion (in the rain) to put them together...

trying to show steepness of the hills

we even had visitors...

Field Trip to Tivoli

Wednesday's field trip took us to Tivoli on a 2.5 hour bus ride.Tivoli is south of Rome. First we saw Hadrian's Villa by Palladio. It was mostly in ruins which was sort of a shock because what we saw in history were pictures from its prime. Next, we went to one of my favorite things I learned about--Villa d'Este. Villa d'Este is a beautifully manicured garden space with fountains everywhere.

ruins of Hadrian's Villa

turtle sunbathing at Hadrian's Villa

Villa d'Este

wall of a thousands fountains--spans a large portion of the garden

Castiglion Fiorentino

Setting up our 'sticks'. We each had to carve and design a stick and then assemble them all together. We have done this a total of 7 times so far with different rules each time. Its interesting...

pink clouds at sunset

Group Dinner at La Foce

Saturday after visiting the statue of David in Florence we headed to the top of the mountain in Castiglion for a group dinner with k-state students. The restaurant was called La Foce and it was the best meal. It was also the first time eating quality meat since we have been in Italy. Usually we have mystery meat at the study center or it is in smaller portions. After dinner we went to the carnival that is in town.

brushetta with various meats

ravioli with a really good cheese center

pasta filled with a cheese similar to ricotta cheese, really good.

a really good meat similar to filet mignon with potatoes. the meat was so good.

a pound cake like dessert, it was ok

 

our professor and his wife on the bumper cars

the ride that spun and tilted really fast--notice the lack of safety belts. It was a little scary at times



Update--We just completed our projects so the sleep count has been a little low. I have lots of blog posts to catch up on in my final week here in Italy. I can't believe it is almost over.

Kanishka's Birthday

We went to Passagio's for Kanishka's birthday lunch. This is our favorite pizza place in Castiglion.

big calzone!

spicy pepperoni and ham pizza

bacon and rugula pizza

Florence Field Trip VI

We went back to Florence for another field trip. This particular week was cultural awareness week so everything was free to visit. This meant extremely long lines everywhere. Our class stood in the rain for about 2.5 hours waiting to get in somewhere and then we stepped out of line when we had to go to lunch. We did get to have a class lunch at a restaurant that has been open since the 1500s. After, we had to go to the Galileo Museum to meet with our history professor. We saw some more books and maps from the 15-1600s.

Cinque Terre Day 3

Sunday 3.15.12
We started off the morning with some crepes. These are really thin pancakes filled and topped with nutella. For my first crepe experience, they were pretty good. We also had several meals over the weekend with this bread that had olive oil in it. It was really good and we would put pesto on it for snacks. Cinque Terre is known for its pesto and it is definitely better than the pesto we are used to eating. After spending some time at the marina we made our way back to Castiglion Fiorentino.

 



Cinque Terre Day 2

Saturday 3.14.12

Saturday we set out to hike to the other cities. First we hiked the “Via dell Amore” (path of love). This was a fully paved path that wound around the hilly seaside to the next town, Monterolla. Much of the railing along the path was covered with locks that people have put onto them. There were also writings on the walls along the way which were funny to read at times. Cinque Terre was hit with severe flooding and mudslides last October so the next few paths were closed. We took a train instead to Vernazzo, one of the worst hit cities by the flooding. None of the shops on the main corso were open. Most of them were either boarded up or were in the process of reconstruction. It was a pretty devastating flood for the city. Next, we went to Monterosso by train because we could not find the hiking path. We had planned to hike from Monterossa back to Vernazzo but by the time we got there it started to rain again. The lady at the train station told us that was the most dangerous portion of the hike with lots of stairs and narrow paths. Combined with the rain this would have been a terrible idea so we sat a bar for a few hours to wait it out. The workers decided it was appropriate to play country music through their loud speakers. They seemed to enjoy it and even belted out some of the songs including Garth Brooks and Toby Keith. It was pretty amusing. Once we left, they switched back to their normal beats. We made our way back to Riomaggiore for dinner with the rest of the group who also came to Cinque Terre this weekend. 


City of Monterolla

hillside in Monterolla covered in vineyards

flood damage in Vernazzo

what used to be sea front is now an area of rubble

hiding from the rain in Monterossa