a blog about cultural differences

Italian child chasing pigeons in Piazza del Campo

I am sick. Again. It’s just this nagging little cold like thing that comes and goes occasionally.

Anyways, quickly about my trip the previous weekend to Siena: We left at 8:30am on Friday morning and arrived around 3 hours later at Le Rocche di Vagliano, the place we stayed in for 2 nights. It was literally in the middle of nowhere–but that added so much to its charm. We all stayed in little villas that were clustered together, only the one that Kelsey, Rachael, Abby and I shared was two stories, had a kitchen, living room, and 2 bathrooms/bedrooms. Other people were not so lucky. Later, we arrived in Pienza–a cute little hill town of about 2,000–where we ate lunch and had a quick tour of the city. Unfortunately, we barely had any free time here, except to sample some pecorino cheese (not my favorite), but that was a group thing. I got bus-sick on the way to Montalcino, where we toured Castello Banfi, the main winery in Tuscany–and the most famous. Naturally, after the tour we got to taste some of the best Tuscan wines–if we’re going to be honest here… I still prefer the 6 euro bottle of Chianti–I’m definitely not the wine connoisseur type.

Afterwards, we ate dinner at this cute little pizzeria in Montalcino–I really wish I could have seen that city during the daytime, it looked like it was really pretty. The next morning, we ate a big breakfast (by Italian standards) and spent the entire day in Siena–the three hour tour took up most of the time. When it was time to eat lunch, we all were expecting another big CIEE meal–but not like the one we had. They came around first with an appetizer, which was different types of bruschetta. Then, the waiter came and asked me (since I’m vegetarian) if having ravioli with butter and sage sauce was okay. I was like, alright. After I ate all of that, he came around again and told me we were having pasta for the next course as well–so would I be fine with tomato sauce? Okay. I figured this was the second course, and then we’d have dessert. He brought out gnocchi–I ate all of it. Then he came around a third time, announced we’d be having another course, and asked if I’d like a cheese plate or a caprese salad. I looked at him like… you’re crazy. There can’t be another course. But there was. (I had the cheese plate because I could not possibly eat anything else, so at least I could be polite and pick at it a little.) The meat eaters actually had way more food, and I don’t know how they survived. For dessert, they brought out a dessert wine and ricciarelli, almond sweets that are famous from Siena.

After lunch, we had 2 hours of free time–too much! Plus, we couldn’t even climb up the tower to get good views because it was closed–it was a beautiful day, which was a shame. Kelsey and I just ended up wandering around the hilly streets for the entire time, which wasn’t bad–but by that point I was really tired and just wanted to get back on the bus. When we returned to Le Rocche, we had to eat dinner. Unfortunately, it was cooked by the people who ran the place (and wasn’t that great) and unfortunately, no one wanted to eat it. So, everyone just got incredibly drunk, and we all played charades. It was great fun.

The next morning, we were all quite… dead. Or hungover, whichever term you prefer. I actually didn’t get drunk, but instead felt like I had a cold (the same one that I have now), so I slept for most of the bus ride. We stopped for an hour in Monteriggioni, a very well preserved medieval town not far from Le Rocche. It was really quiet, and unfortunately, a cloudy day–but I still enjoyed walking around. By the time we arrived in Pistoia, where we had a “light” lunch and yet another guided tour… we all just wanted to get back on the bus. Finally, we returned to Ferrara at around 7:30–honestly, I’ve grown very attached to this town. So much that I can’t even leave it for a weekend without missing it. I forsee this as being quite a problem in May. But we’ll take each day as it comes.

For right now, I have to study some renaissance art for my art history midterm tomorrow… if anyone’s interested, I got a high A on my Italian midterm (I think the highest in the class). Not that it counts, which sucks. Also, I found out that Drake has every modern language spoken taught through its DULAP program except Italian. Another reason to hate DULAP. I’ll write more about last week later–it wasn’t really that eventful, I promise!

A dopo!