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Friday, January 16, 2009

Chianti and Villa Vignamaggio

Today we were treated to a day out in the Tuscan countryside, in a region called Chianti (Ki-aunt-ee). It was beautiful, and really peaceful. I could have stayed there all day...Apparently Villa Vignamaggio (where we had lunch) is where Leonardo found his Mona Lisa. :) I'm sure this is one of many stories, but it's fun to think anyway! Coincidentally it is also where "Much Ado about Nothing" was filmed. Apparently they finished filming in 1.5 months, but stayed for 7...hmmmmm.....I've posted a few pictures up here, but check out my photo album page for more. I'm also planning to put up more from the San Niccolo reigion of Florence. Karen and I are supposed to map the reigion for an architecture assignment, so we took LOTS of pictures yesterday. :)

Anyway! Back to Chianti: We met at the Santa Maria Novella train station where we were split into two groups. Our group went to Villa Vignamaggio, while the other group was bussed off to some castle somewhere???

We all got into this huge Charter bus, and started off towards the Villa, which took about 45 minutes to get to. Very windy, very steep, and very narrow roads! Rather scary in a precarious bus, with crazy impatient drivers coming towards you!

Once we reached the Villa, we were given lunch! They let us taste two of the wines that their vineyard is famous for, which were amazing, and provided us with bread, and a selection of meats to snack on. Risotto came out later. I have a few pictures posted in my album. The bottles of water on the table kind of ruin the mood, but they're commonplace over here! Everyone seems to think that the tap water tastes horrible...It's better than the tap water in Pullman!

After our lunch, we were taken on a tour of the villa. It was actually sunny today!! I was so excited to finally be warm, and had a lot of fun wandering in and around the grapes, and olive trees.

Anyway, point being, I had lots of fun imagining running off Under-the-Tuscan-Sun style, and buying a villa here to live in. :)

Tomorrow I'm off to see Pisa and Lucca! I'm sure I'll have the obligatory touristy pictures to show you then. :) Until tomorrow!





























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