Orvieto Weekend

This weekend Kelsey and I took a trip to visit our friends in the lovely town of Orvieto.  We met up with them at the top of the hill, and we strolled through the quaint little streets to the girls’ house.  Seeing how I live in a room the size of a large closet, it was quite shocking to walk into their “apartment” and find a huge living room, multiple bathrooms, and three bedrooms with lots of space in between everything.  These girls are so spoiled! (Besides the fact there is a slight mold problem).  For dinner a “baby chef” (chef in training in Orvieto) made us a delicious dinner!  There are several chefs that actually cook at the restaurants in town and are from America, so they befriend all the K-Staters.

We had lots of fun getting together with all the people in Orvieto, and went to a bar called Beer House the first night we were there.  There was a live band and Rachel told me if we sat there long enough they would serve us free food.  Didn’t get any free food, so next time I’m in Orvieto I am just going to go to Beer House, take a seat and wait. 

We did some shopping and found leather shops and olive wood shops, both very cool!  The leather shop had purses, wallets, key chains, bracelets (that he could fit to your wrist right there), and even earrings.  The olive wood shops had beautiful products, anything from a mini chess board to serving spoons.  One of the olive wood stores had a man in the back building things, and you could watch him as he showed off his mad wood-working skills.  We eventually stumbled upon an alley that led to a small store, and we weren’t sure if it was a shop or a restaurant at first.  The lady asked if we wanted to do a free tasting, and we quickly agreed to.  She poured us each a glass of wine and water, and then toasted up some bread and spread olive oil on it, with a sprinkle of salt to top it off.  It was delicious!  We also tried olive paste, and olive and truffle paste.  The olive paste tasted like smashed olives on toast, and the truffle taste was very strong in the second one, but I did purchase some adorable little tins of olive oil to bring home.

We relaxed at the girls’ apartment, and in the morning we slept in long enough to be woken up by the front door flying open. It was Jordan!  She had been traveling around Italy with her boyfriend, and had just celebrated her birthday on Saturday in Rome.  It was just our luck to get to see her!  We hung out on the futon all morning, made some left-over pasta for lunch, and then headed to the train station. 

Today is Monday and we have tonight to turn in some homework (yes, I wrote a paper!), pack for two weeks and be ready to leave for Venice at 07:00 tomorrow morning.  I will be traveling around Italy and Spain, so I'll list my plans for the following two weeks below:

Tuesday:

7:00 am - leave for Venice

11:33 am - arrive in Venice, check into hotel (in Lido), and grab some lunch

2:00 am - meet for a tour

Wednesday:

8:30 am - breakfast, morning is free

3:00 pm - meet for tour of St. Marks with our tour guide Martino

8:00 pm - we will be going to a classical concert as a group!

Thursday:

7:30 am - breakfast, morning is free

3:00 pm - meet for tour of the Peggy Guggenheim

SAINT PATRICK'S DAY!

Friday:

7:30 am - breakfast, packing for Spain!

10:30 am - check out of hotel, move to another hotel for the night

Saturday:

Fly to Barcelona, Spain

--SPRING BREAK!--

Be in Barcelona for 4 days

Train to Valencia

Be in Valencia for 3 days

Train back to Barcelona

Be in Barcelona for one more day before flying to Rome and heading back to Castiglion Fiorentino!

Now that you can stalk me, I must get some things packed and papers turned in!  Oh, and since I gave you that schedule I hope you can see that I will be updating my blog much less, and there will probably be one VERY long post in two weeks.  Get your reading glasses ready!

Cara Marie

Words Italians Can't Pronounce:
Today in History class Giovanni gave us a couple more words: castle, emphasis on the "t;" and our new favorite, monks, pronounced "monkeys." 

Spill of the Day:
I'm sorry to say I've been a bit boring lately, all I've spilt is a pepperoni in my lap at a Pizzeria Charlie's in Orvieto.  And nobody even saw, so it was hardly a catastrophe.  Tonight at dinner Marissa completely overshot her glass when refilling it with water and it dribbled around her cup, that's about as good as it gets.