I haven’t written in a while, mostly due to how much time I’ve been spending outside. We’ve had ridiculously nice weather, making the productivity in studio non-existent. We did, however, have a critique last Thursday, so Kelsey and I spent a few days being super productive so we could still get our outside time. We have designed a gateway for the vineyard, a path and a new outdoor wine tasting. We have research and materials and floor plans and elevations and all sorts of good studio progress. Our teacher even told us we were ahead of a lot of people. Hoorah!
There are just a couple things I need to write about, like how I hiked to a castle across the valley, toured Pienza and Montepulciano, had an amazing lunch, had a lake day, and went to the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens in Florence. The hike to the castle deserves its own post, so I’ll start with Montepulciano and Pienza.
These two towns were scheduled on the same day, and we traveled in between the two. In the morning we stopped at a really big church, where we didn’t have a tour guide. Our teachers knew nothing about it, so for the next stop we found a last minute tour guide. At the big church we took lots of pictures and wandered around clueless. It was pretty cool because it was in an open field rather than crammed into a city or town.
The next stop was Pienza. This was where we found a last-second tour guide that did nothing more than show us around town. She used the words “beautiful” and “amazing” a lot, and really just talked about where different things were in town and told us a few facts – none that involve real architectural information. I’m convinced she wiki’d her own town and just memorized what it said. She did, however, take us to the side of the church where there is a big crack from it being built on an unstable piece of land and bullet holes from the war.
After our tour of the town, we went into what we think was a palace, but with the lack of knowledge from our professors we’ll never be too sure. We saw lots of artwork and different rooms from some family that was like the Medici’s of the Siena area. If you see a crest with 5 half-moons, it’s that family that I can’t remember the name of, and they stand for how many crusades they’ve been a part of. We also saw a garden, the first renaissance garden I’ve seen. It had all the hedgerows in geometrical patterns and overlooked the valley.
After building up our appetites walking around town, we went as a group to a restaurant where lunch was served, and the waiters just kept the food coming. They served appetizers, lasagna, pasta, sausage, roast beef, ham, and tiramisu. Best lasagna I’ve ever had. If we could have merged the food from Pienza and everything else from the best day of my life, it would have created the most ultimate day in the history of days.
In Montepulciano, we saw where the second Twiglight movie was filmed, and learned that almost everything was set up. There wasn’t even a fountain for Bella to run through – it was all built the day they filmed and taken down a couple days later! We also saw the wine cellar for the city. They call it the second cathedral of the town – in other words they worship God first, and then wine. The wine cellar had humongous barrels and was really creepy, perfect for the filming of Twilight. We toured it, learned some history, and then were sent to the gift shop. That concluded our day and we headed back to Castiglion Fiorentino.
Next was the lake day. On Friday my roomies and I had decided that we wanted to go to the lake between Castiglion and Orvieto, that other people had gone to the previous weekend. At lunch we told some people about it, and they liked the idea, so the group kept growing and growing. Some of the boys looked at the train times and found that there were trains at 1:30, 2:00 or 2:30. We knew we were going to take our time eating lunch, packing and walking to the train station, so we were taking the 2:30 train. The boys, needing to get the most time in every aspect of travel in Italy, skipped fruit and ran to the train station. We’re clearly smarter because I got two oranges and an apple, and had a nice stroll down to the train station, rather than a sprint.
When we arrived at the stop where the lake was, we had to walk through the town a bit to get to the beach. There was a lot of cute B&Bs, parks, shops and a marina. We walked along the shore until we found a beach with a bar, volleyball court, gelateria, pool, and our friends. We relaxed all afternoon, stepped in the water but didn’t stay long, some people swam in the freezing water, saw a guy wind surfing, saw the wind surfer wipe out, and got gelato to top the day off. Some people played ultimate Frisbee, and Jake cut his foot really bad. He hobbled all around until I got him the first aid kit my mom made me. It finally got put to use for something more than sore feet. While going through all the stuff in the kit I realized I could probably perform surgery if it’s needed.
Saturday brought a last minute decision to go to Florence and see the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens. Hooray for Italian Culture Week, because entry was free to both the gardens and the palace! A goal for the day was to find the sculpture of a naked fat man on a turtle. The man was the favorite jester of the Medici family. We hiked through the gardens and saw lots of plants and fountains and pretty scenery of Florence. We found lots of secret corners and hidden gardens where the Medici’s could have had secret rendezvous. We visited an exhibit they currently have of a Pompeian garden, funny seeing that after seeing the real thing. After seeing the gardens, we went to the Pitti Palace and toured the Palatine Museum and an exhibit of costumes. The costumes exhibit had clothes from the 1800s as well as modern interpretations of each of the old ones. They also had fun retro clothing and accessories on display. We skipped the modern art exhibit and met with some people to head back to the train station.
That’s all for now because it’s dinner time, next up is the hike to the castle and a blurb on the vehicles of Italy.
Cara Marie
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