A Chianti Experience

On Saturday, Angie, Nicole, and I had signed up to go on a school field trip called the Chianti Experience, so we gave Tony and Mike a map and sent them out into the city and we boarded and bus and went to the Verrazzano Vineyard about an hour and a half away. The vineyard has been there since the 1100’s and the guy who stared it or originally lived/owned the place is the same guy who founded New York and there is now a bridge in New York named after him, the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge. They also mentioned that the owner of the vineyard on the other side of the next hill over was originally Amerigo Vespucci which I though was pretty cool too. So we got there, took some pretty touristy pictures; Gino, the manager, gave us a tour of the vineyard and explained the wine making process in short and then we sat down to our four course meal with like three bottles of wine and at and drank with the best of them. The girls at our table ended up knowing Tony and Mike (they have a friend that was studying in Rome and had stayed w/ the boys a couple of weeks ago) so we made friends with them and had a great time. By the end of our meal I was absolutely stuffed and proceeded to take a nap on the way home, it was delightful, except I missed the beautiful Italian countryside that we saw on the way up to the vineyard. We got back around 5ish and found that Tony and Mike’s other roommate Pat had also come to Florence with his sister and cousin who were visiting him and so they all came over and we cooked a big meal – penne pasta with chicken, zucchini, and a white cream sauce – again, amazing. I really do feel like I’m just studying abroad to become more domesticated sometimes – just kidding mom!! We also had a series of power outages while cooking dinner – at least 15+ times, no joke, our power went out, I finally gave up and made Tony go down our six flights of stairs every time. Later that night, we all went out and met up with Neil and his girlfriend, we then met our roommates and went to a new bar/club that had opened that had 5euro drinks (pretty cheap for Italy) – it definitely turned out to be another great night! I love all three of those boys and Pat’s sister and cousin; everything is so much better in good company I’m learning. 

April 1, 2008