Video Fun

This is a video from when Lindsey, Lauren, Patrick, Allan and I trekked up to the top of town. We decided that the day that a HUGE storm was coming was the best day to get up to the Duomo. When we got up there it was so windy I was afraid my camera was going to blow away. Funny enough the Duomo was NOT open.

We have realized that in Amelia if a store is open, go in. I have yet to learn hours for stores, and don't assume the posted hours are the real hours, maybe one day those were the hours they were open, but not anymore.

Ciao, ciao!

Bottles and bottles of wine, oh my!

Last week was quite entertaining and filled with sleep depravation. :-)

We started on Monday night going to a local vineyard with our favorite restaurant owners (the Rossi family). We were treated to a tour and a 5 course meal, complete with 5 different wines. 

I am trying very hard to hold true to my "more people in pictures" rules. I listen to you guys and amend my posts appropriately. :-) I welcome the feedback!

This is Kate, Lindsey, Lauren, Me, and Olivia (Olivia is an incredibly awesome girl from the UK, so you know I am super jealous of her accent!).

At the end of each row of grapes they have rose bushes. The rose bushes are not just for aesthetics, they actually serve a very neat purpose. Farmers use the roses to monitor the health of the grapes. Since roses are so delicate, they will react to things much more quickly than the grapevines will, so if a rose dies, or gets infected, they can either do something to protect the grapevines, or they can get rid of those vines so that disease does not spread! Smart Italians.

Here is the nice outdoor dining area. This picture does not do it justice. It's like a movie set, complete with twinkling lights overhead. This is not a restaurant, it is just the vineyard owners home. They do not typically have large parties, so this is just their porch.

Here are some of the photos of the area where they actually make the wine (these are for you Mr. Mann).

The bottles of wine pre-filling.

Vats o' wine. They were empty. :-(

This is the owner of the vineyard showing us how they fill, label and cork the bottles.

The wife of the owner painted these on the wall and...

the boar was turned into the label for their red.

Wine heaven! SO MUCH WINE!! :-)

Lindsey, Lauren and I with what we wish was a real bottle of wine. ;-)

And now for some photos of dinner: miso fritto! Translation... fried stuff. This fried stuff included: rosemary, sage leaves, onions, stuffed pepper, and a zucchini flower.

This is eggplant parmesan... AMAZING!!! Something worth noting, in Italy it is not breaded.

Starting at the top: wild boar sausage, beef and liver, beef, and potato. (yes, I sorta had to start eating beef... no I did not eat the liver. I am expanding my eating horizons, but not that far).

I took this for my uncle, but then realized that everyone would appreciate it. :-)

We ended up being at the Vineyard until 2am... and then we had to get home... and ready for bed... and in bed by 3am, only to wake up at 7am. It was TOTALLY worth it!

The next day we had a horrible storm!

This is my very unsuccessful attempt to show you the pebbles of hail that were hitting my windows. The worst thing about storms is that if they are really bad you have to close your windows, and that leads to things being very steamy in your apartment.

After the storm (on Tuesday) we went to Punto DiVino (which is the restaurant that coordinated our vineyard trip) for Catherine's dinner. I didn't get pictures at dinner, but I wanted to show you how pretty it was!

Ok, that's all for now. I must stop procrastinating and work on my presentation for tomorrow. I miss you all and will update you on our 4th of July party later! :-)

Ciao ciao (which I find to be less odd, now that I realize it literally means "bye bye")

Stormy Times

On Sunday we decided to have a nice relaxing day. I don't think we realized how hard it would be to go to class 6 days a week. More specifically I don't think we realized how hard it would be to go to class 6 days a week and then spend our day off fitting in as many day trips as possible.

We realized that we had yet to hike to the top of the town. (In all of the pictures I post, the top of the town is the building surrounded by scaffolding, the Duomo (church).) We had the brilliant idea to hike up because the weather was cool so we figured we wouldn't die of heat exhaustion. As we started making our way to the top we realized that the storm clouds that seemed to be safely in the distance were starting to close in... did we stop? Nope. We are troopers.

We met up with Patrick and Allan (two boys in our class) who decided to join us for our hike. We made it up there (not before I almost busted my bottom by slipping while going up the incline of the "short cut") just in time. Look at the views of the storm. I have a video, and I am going to go to a restaurant in town to try to load it, but it is amazing. These pictures are too calm, the wind was amazing up there, I thought my camera might get blown away.

We made it down, and to Lauren's apartment, just in time. The rain started pouring and did not stop until late at night. While waiting out the storm at Lauren's (Lindsey and I naively thought it would stop at some point... since we did not have umbrellas or anything and were still a little far from home) Lindsey and I decided to investigate this random door in her apartment. Where does it lead? What's behind it? 

The best way to describe it would be a Scooby Doo episode (Lindsey playing Daphne and me being Velma - Thanks to Kate for helping me spell those correctly!). It was a dark and stormy afternoon, thunder was clapping and our imaginations were running wild. 

After finally figuring out how to use something (we tried butter knives, string, other random tools and items found around the apartment) to slide the latch back we unlocked the door and ran back up the stairs (we had completely sensationalized what may/may not be behind the door so we had freaked ourselves out).

We got Lauren to come and then explained to her that we thought she should open the door because she has a criminal justice background. She tried to point out that she is not an officer, and therefore was not a better choice than either Lindsey or I, but we didn't buy it. So Lauren went down the stairs to the door, opened it and ran back up.

We were not nearly as entertained by what was behind the door. No stolen art, no bodies, just junk. Apparently it is a storage space with paint and other odd items. A fun adventure anyways! :-)

I realized the other day you hadn't met Tulip! Lauren was smart enough to bring her dog with her for the summer, so we all claim her as our own since we miss our animals so much. Tulip (or Tulipana as the Italians call her) is an adorable, sweet, happy little puppy. I love her mainly because she is cat sized. It helps me resist the urge to "borrow" one of the cats I find outside my apartment. :-)

In her adorable bag.

Final updates to this blog and then I am officially caught up:

1. It is COLD (well... cold to a Florida girl) here... high of 69 today. We are going to try to get to Rome this weekend to buy a jacket or something. The clothes in the stores in Amelia are CRAZY expensive.

2. There was an earthquake on Monday night. We were out and about and I didn't realize it, but apparently other people had things shaking, etc. Neat! I lived through an Earthquake. :-)

3. The kids outside my apartment at night have decided to start using high pitch sustained whistling instead of talking... grrr. 

4. In Italy you cannot buy conditioner in a normal sized bottle. A 4 ounce container costs 6E, I don't get it.

5. You can buy a huge container of freshly made ricotta for 4 E.

We are going to a creepy sculpture garden today (you'll understand when I post pictures) so you should have something fun tomorrow. 

Ciao!