Careful what you wish for

While I was working on that last post, I stopped to get some food with friends which requires a 20 minute walk into town.  Food was good.  It starts pouring though.  We are umbrellaless mostly in flip-flops, I was in Tacky Shirt (TS).  We started jogging back to the house with rain just soaking us.  Finally we get home (which was uphill the whole time) I look down and the backs of my legs are COVERED in mud.  There were spots of mud up to the bottom of TS!  It literally looked like I had just given up and sat down in a pile of mud.  HOW?!  Anyways I figured that I had to post about that little adventure since I was just mentioning how few adventures have been going on in the past few days.  Cheers to the daily adventure!  And cudos to anyone who actually made it through the entire last post!

The one with all the facts

Let's start this off with the understanding that this post will not be about adventure.  It's been all of 12 hours since my last post what more do you want from me?!  I'm in this awesome house that's about a 20 minute walk from the nearest town which is about a half hour drive from Florence.  We tried!  We tried to go to Pisa/the Mediterranean yesterday but we missed the bus and we were going to try again today, but the time tables on Sundays are pretty crappy so the timing wouldn't work out.  So the most adventuring I've had since the last post (now that I'm finally caught up on all of the other adventures) was a little tennis.  Sorry, I'm slacking, I know.  So the plan now is to give you a story about our time at the gelato factory, all the fun facts about food from the past few lectures, a few pictures, and a video from the gelato and chocolate factories.  Hopefully that's sufficient.

Gelato factory: this place was pretty tiny so our group of 16 had to break up into two groups, one waiting outside under the tuscan sun (boom! movie reference) and the other one inside enjoying this Italian ice cream.  Once inside, you're greeted by a man who speaks pretty solid English, which is nice, it makes everything go faster.  So instead of hearing someone rambling on in what sounds like that language that sims speak and then getting the translation, you just skip straight to the real language.  So gelato guy (not cool enough to be an Uncle) explained that all of his ingredients are natural, that he makes his gelato for that day and the next and that's it.  In fact, he has to come in at 4 AM to start making all the gelato.  Also, I'm pretty sure he said that all of his gelato comes from the same cream base which tastes kind of like a milk shake (we got samples and I had to finish everyone's since the girls weren't down with the idea of chugging liquid fat and sugar...go figure.)  Also, pistachios, we learned, should make your ice cream this baby-poop-green color instead of that bright mint green color.

Alright!  On to the facts!

1. peanuts are technically not a nut...they're a legume!
2. Rye first arose as a weed in wheat and barley crops.
3. Ergot (also known as Holy fire or St. Anthony's fire) is a fungus (that grows on rye) that generates alkyloids that stimulate uterine muscles and hallucinations (because those go together?) and is similar to LSD (Lysurgic acid diethylamide) which was discovered in 1943 by Albert Hofmann.
4. In 1755 some English reference source described oats as "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."
5. Rice is the principle food for about 50% of the world's population, which is good since there are over 100,000 distinct varieties.
6. Sticky rice is sometimes called waxy, sweet, or glutinous rice.  It is not sweet and doesn't contain gluten...
7. Wild rice is not actually rice.
8. Raw rice carries bacteria which can produce gastrointestinal toxins and can survive cooking temperatures.  They can germinate in leftover rice that is not refrigerated.   
9. Dent corn is used to make grits...and horse feed.
10. Popcorn pops best at 380 degrees Fahrenheit.
11. Rice krispies are esentially glassy networks of rice that when placed in cold milk, experience stress fractures and breaks due to uneven contraction across the krispie.  This gives them their distinct sound.  Oh snap!...krackle and pop...
12. Everyone produces 1 quart of gas per day. Some of this is due to bean intake, there's a specific bacteria that breaks beans down into carbon dioxide and hydrogen gases.
13. Peanut butter was originally developed in 1890.
14. Brazil nuts contain high levels of selenium.  They are anti-cancer agents, but when consumed in large quantities (more than 5 ounces a day) it is toxic.
15. Harvesters of brazil nuts have to carry shields so they don't get concussions from nuts dropping out of the trees.  Seriously.
16. Cashews are never sold in their shells since the shell has properties similar to poison ivy.
17. Macadamia nuts are named in honor of John macadamia, a Scottish scientist, and close friend of the man who discovered the nuts.
18. To make beer or rice alcohols, you have to let the starchy grains sprout a bit or mold a bit before cooked, so the starch can be broken into sugars.
19. Flaming dishes are usually fueled by brandy or rum.  The food isn't actually burnt, the energy from the combustion of the alcohol is absorbed by the water in the brandy/rum.
20. Yeast producing alcohols can tolerate 20% alcohol concentration in their environment.  
21. Alcohol provides 5% of calories in the average American diet.
22. Your stomach absorbs alcohol before it can reach your intestines to be absorbed into your blood stream.  In men, about 30% of the alcohol is lost to the stomach while in women only 10% is lost to the stomach.  Yet another reason men can drink more than women.
23. Hypersensitivity to sound and light (during a hangover) may be leftover compensation for the depression of the nervous system.
24. Dry mouth and headache (during a hangover) are caused by dehydration.  Drinking coffee counteracts the constriction of cranial blood vessels, thereby helping with the headache. 
25. Long simmered stews retain 5% of the cooking alcohol, briefly cooked dishes retain 10-50%, flambes can retain up to 75%.
26. Grapes are the worlds largest fruit crop, 70% of them are used for wine making.
27. Cork, coming from the bark of a tree, can spoil, and in turn spoil the wine.  5% of all wine bottles are spoiled due to tainted cork.
28. Champagne bottles have a gas pressure of about 3-4 atmospheres.  That's about the same pressure as car tires.  It contains six times its volume in carbon dioxide.
29. Less than 10% of the world's sparking wine is true champagne.
30. Lipstick, oils from food, traces of dish soap all reduce the bubbliness.
31. Champagne is best served at 40 degrees F in tall, narrow glasses so the bubbles are smaller and last longer.
32. The aroma of a wine changes from the first sip to the last due to the contact with the air.
33. If wine is cloudy and contains particles that don't settle, it's spoiled don't drink it.  If the particles to settle, its indicative of more acid in the wine which makes it taste better.
34. Darker wine tends to be older.
35. Lager comes from the German word lagrin which means to store.
36. Fresh beer is called "green beer."  It has little carbon dioxide, is cloudy with dead yeast cells, and has a harsh sulfrous flavor.
37. Some british and Belgian beers should be aged to improve over 1-2 years.
38. Bear foam should cling to the glass as the level of liquid drops, this is called lacing.
39. Stouts can have nitrogen gas instead of carbon dioxide. 
40. in 1876, Henri Nestle was the first to produce milk powder.
41. The Swiss eat about twice as much chocolate as Americans.
42. Swiss and German chocolate is ground smoother than English or American Chocolate.
43. White chocolate, invented in 1930, is technically not a chocolate.  It is a mixture of purified cocoa butter, milk solids, and sugar
44. Chocolate cools your mouth as it melts, which feels cool.
45. Chocolate contains a specific type of saturated fat that can be converted into oleic acid (a healthy fat).
46. One ounce of chocolate contains as much caffeine as a third of a cup of coffee.
47. Theobromine, a relative of caffeine in chocolate, increases feeling of well being, is a mild anti-depressant, stimulates muscular system, stimulate the kidneys.  It's also what's bad for dogs.
48. Chocolate does contain cannabinoid chemicals.

That's condensed down from 33 pages of notes.

Here are the pictures promised:

The clock tower in Siena at night...Sorry my camera doesn't do night pictures well

San Domingio (or something like that) from the vineyard

A close of of San Domingio...SO MANY TOWERS!

A view...

Another view...from the tower in Sandomingingio

ME!

And the videos as promised:

This is gelato coming out of the magic gelato machine...

And this is chocolate coming out of the magic chocolate machine!  I appreciate how all the food in Italy comes out of magic machines in a pretty awesome fashion.

Don't judge me...

Sorry about the lack of posts over the past few days, we actually had homework for my class, so I actually had to do something other than explore and blog.  So much has happened so this will be a pretty scattered post.  Also, there are a lot of fun facts about food and such that I think might just get their own post.

OK, so jumping back to last weekend in Florence, I had an adventure with haggling.  I actually failed pretty hard at haggling.  I really wanted a brown leather belt, since when I go to the Vatican next weekend, I have to wear dress shoes (which are brown) and I don't have a brown belt.  We went to this market in some random part of Florence which, if you are claustrophobic, would be a terrible experience.  There were so many people in these tiny isles between racks of colorful purses and scarves and statues and flags and all these other random assortments of items that people associate with Italy.  Deep in the heart of this market, we found this stand that was selling belts and I picked this one that was 18 euro, with the intention of toughing it out and bargaining my way down to 15 at least.  I hate bargaining, so much so that when I bought my car, I called my dad and gave the phone to the dealer so they could haggle over the price.  I decided it was about time for me to face this fear and haggle.  I had these images in my head of being picky and bidding low and slowly accepting the real price I want.  What really happened?  I got to the counter where a woman spoke very little english and muttered "uhh...so...will you take less for this?"  "No."  "Oh.  OK.  That's fine."   So after that great success, as I'm shamefully pulling out 18 euros to pay, the woman grabs the belt, drops down into a squat in front of me, and reaches behind my back.  I was pretty surprised, but she was just testing to see if it would fit.  It was too big.  So she pops back up unscrews the hook thing at one end and just cuts some off.  I guess I looked pretty terrified that my new 18 Euro belt was being cut, especially since I couldn't event get her to cut the price.  She said "You Americans are always so afraid.  To us, this is normal.  If belt doesn't fit, you cut!"  Then she starts shouting "Marco!  Marco!"  I was thinking, oh God, what did I do and why does she think my name is Marco.  Then Marco, who easily could have just walked off the set of the Jersey Shore, appears and punches a whole in the belt and walks away.  Then she screwed the buckle back on, dropped down to a squat again, tested the belt.  Satisfied, she bagged it and sent me on my way.  That was fun...

Me in my tacky shirt.

Back in Siena, I had another market experience.  Every Wednesday a market appears out of nowhere.  It's like an outdoor walmart.  Even the people who go are like walmart people!  I was at home.  The group that went shopping was comprised of me, another guy, and three girls.  In a surprising twist, me and the other guy were more into shopping for clothes than any of the girls and they all just wanted food.  The market does strange things to people...  I found a 90's blue shirt with black material sewed into it to look like a vest and iron on necklaces for only 5 euro.  I bought it, it was made for me after all.  I was now a proud owner of "the tacky shirt"  which now has a song and dance. 

I was mistaken for an Italian!  Boom!  Mission accomplished!  Some tourist (I'm so over tourists at this point, standing and taking pictures, blocking the streets when I just want to get to where I'm going) comes up to me and says "Pardon...Uhh..Plaza Basilico?" in an American accent but in an attempt to speak Italian that landed closer to French.  I chuckled a bit and said "I'm American too.  Now what are you looking for?"  It turns out he was looking for a bus station that I could have walked him to but had trouble explaining where it was, so our poor confused friend had to bumble through asking a real Italian, in poor French, where the bus station was.

 Yesterday, we toured a Vineyard/saffron farm and a chocolate factory.  This meant that we started drinking wine and grappa (which is a type of alcohol similar to vodka made from the skins and stems of wine grapes) at roughly 10:30 in the morning.  Aggressive.  There is also a new rule, no wounded soldiers in Italy, meaning that any food or drink given to the group must be consumed.  Typically, the responsibility falls to me and another guy.  So, brunch was quite an experience.  As was the chocolate factory afterwards.  It was a little hard to focus with close to a bottle and a half of wine metabolizing.  But!  The chocolate was good!  I found, and purchased this chocolate bar.  Sorry for the graphic nature, Italians are weird.

A view from the Vineyard.

The town we meandered after the wine tasting and before the chocolate factory.

Last night, we headed out to our haunt for the weekend.  It is a 7500 sq foot villa built in the 1500's with a sitting room in it's tower, a pool, a tennis court, and a reading garden.  UHH-MAY-ZING.  We continued the days activities well into the night, playing taboo and singing and dancing in the tower, that was likely a bell tower that has been converted. 

Views from the tower.

At some point, I began serenading this girl (the one who is very concerned about the amount of fat in her milk).  The issue is, I thought I was being really smooth.  Upon reflection, the scene looked a little more like this.  She was cowering in the corner of a couch (in the tower) in the fetal position, as I circled her like a vulture, occasionally dropping to one knee, the entire time "singing" (shouting the wrong lyrics to the song that was playing, which was likely some Fall Out Boy song).  This went on for roughly 20 minutes while my "friends" looked on in sympathy and amusement, much like watching cars crash, over and over and over again.  Eventually, the girl found an opening in my circling and scurried off to bed.  I was heartbroken.  But, such is life. 

The Location of The Event.

Today we were going to go to Pisa, but missed our bus by 2 minutes.  Adventure failed.  The plan is to do it tomorrow so hopefully there will be some fun stories about that.  Cheers to the daily adventure. 

MeetLife Cafe and El Gringo

There's still quite a bit to say about Florence and I still have some fun facts about Siena to share, but it's Monday and it's late so I'll keep this one short.  Today was a birthday for one of the girls in our trip so we went out to a coffee house called MeetLife Cafe.  The bartender spoke really good English and most of the signs were in English which is bad news because that tends to mean you've found a tourist trap which means high prices and crappy food.  Shockingly, the food was crappy but not because it was a tourist trap but simply because this place sells coffee and liquor and that's it, except for their happy hour snack bar which consists of bread, cheese with french flag toothpicks, ham with swiss flag toothpicks, and an assortment of sauces that looked rancid.  We pounded the bread and cheese, and a few of the daring tried the ham, and the rest of us had some coffee drinks or liquor.  I stuck to a nutellino, which was essentially chocolate mousse in a glass, with whip cream, coffee flavoring, and mini chocolate balls.  It was great.  We closed the place down (at 10:30 pm).  So we went across the street to El Gringo!  The Mexican food restaurant known for their cheap tequila shots. 

Some girls from our group, neither one of which is the birthday girl, at El Gringo!

On the bright side, they had cheap margaritas, sangria, and pina coladas as well as cheap tequila.  Sadly, they were out of the margaritas, sangria, and pina coladas.  We all opted out of the tequila shot except for another guy in the group and the birthday girl.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn't good tequila for only 1.5 Euros.  We also ordered nachos with queso, which was as close to chips and queso as we could get.  Yet, somehow corn chips with mozzerella and melted velveeta on them don't quite count as nachos with queso.  The kid from the Denver-New Mexico area disapproves.  Even Donny T's in Lexington Virginia has better mexican food.  Though we are in Europe and the restaurant did have a giant mexican head in the front of the store.  Anyways, an hour or so later and we're still there debating politics, religion, and everything else one does not discuss in civil conversation.  Suddenly, the background music starts blasting authentic mexican folk songs.  Are they trying to kick us out?  But they close at 12:30?  It's only 11:50!  We will not stand for this.  We continued discussing, and eventually ended up having to shout mostly because of how high they had turned up the music but also because it was a pretty heated conversation.  So we finally threw in the towel, and said "ciao, hombre" to El Gringo, a solid 20 minutes before they were supposed to close.

And now that I've actually started writing this entry I feel like a little more prepared to talk about our cooking lesson and class today, so still short, but not as short as it could have been. Sorry...

Today I took 14 pages of notes on dairy products.  I can't even pick out any fun facts for you because after 14 pages of notes, nothing is fun anymore.  I'm pretty sure I became lactose-intolerant because of our lecture.  I guess here's what I learned:

• Sheep and goats were domesticated and milked between 8000 and 9000 BC
• Cheese was originally made by accident in the stomach of an animal while traveling from one city to another carrying milk inside it.
• Lactose-intolerance, not due to incredibly long lectures, actually decreases with prevelance the farther north your ancestors originated.  Rates in Scandinavian countries are around 2% while in Africa they're around 70%, with a gradient in between.

Today, in cooking class, we made some amazing food.  Bowtie pasta, with a bacon cream sauce, beef stew (with a wine and (shockingly) olive oil-based broth),  potato suffle, and apple pie (which really wasn't apple pie and was closer to apple cobbler).  Momeryl was getting a little sassy today, cracking jokes here and there, generally about how hungry we were and how she could count on myself and another guy to eat the left-overs.  We also had this bread with olive oil as an appetizer which was fine, except the bread was awful.  Only ingredients in the bread?  Flour, water, yeast.  Essentially this is what you would get if you had an open bag of flour that spoiled and you baked...  But with enough oil, garlic, salt and pepper it was good.  Apparently the name in Italian refers back to the ages when to test to see if the olive oil was good, men would dip the crappy bread into the olive oil and eat it, letting the oil run down the face...  We were told "you just have to forget the unpleasant effect on your breath, if you are going to enjoy this properly: semel in anno licet insanire, as "everyone can go mad at least once a year."" Though, as I've started my new diet and savings plan, I was starving.  As food and museums in Europe are insanely expensive, and as I don't want to be 300 pounds when I come back to the US, on days when we have cooking lessons, or paid dinners, I'm not buying other meals (starting tomorrow).  We'll see how that goes.  Anyways, cheers to the daily adventure.  Here are some pics to make up for me betraying your trust and giving you a long post despite my introduction.

This is a close up of the Medici house at the Boblie gardens.  The Medicis once owned pretty much everything in Florence, so nearly every museum is in one of their old buildings and based largely on their personal collection.

The view at the top of the Boblie Gardens.

another view from the Gardens.

A view from this sweet church with monks that was just down the street from our house.

One step back and two steps forward

I'm so physically exhausted from seeing ALL of Florence, that getting the motivation to do this blog post was very difficult and included a glass of local red wine and a cup of 1/2 fruit tea and 1/2 green tea.  Moreover, before we delve into this breath-taking experience of Florence, I'll have to step back to Siena to go over a few milestones and experiences.

This past week has flown by, but I feel like I've been here forever (but seriously, not just in the 7th grade girl way of signing year books "OMG this year has flown by, but I feel like I've known you for-eh-ver. LOLZ").  This week was the first time that I've used a clothes-line.  I did a "load" of laundry and was shocked by the size of the laundry machine.  Imagine a top hat that's been stretched into a larger circle,  or a washing machine that is about as deep as a top hat...and it was a front load. What a challenge.  Two hours later...my laundry was clean and I had to figure out a way to dry it.  We don't have a dryer and I'm assuming it's because it would consume too much energy (we were warned that if we had too many things plugged in the power would just shut off...no big deal.)  Anyways, I hunted around town for clothes pins as our well-stocked apartment didn't have any...I finally found some in the Euro store.  After only dropping one pair of underwear to the ground below, I got all of my laundry up.  A day later, it dried, oddly stiff though.  I think I'll stick to modern technology.

Another first from this week: using a bidet.  For those of you not familiar with this nifty device, it's essentially what you would get if you combined a toilet and a sink.  It's meant to give your butt and junk a mini shower.  Supposedly, it's more hygienic.  So, my interaction with this device began roughly 21 years ago when I was conceived.  By random luck, I was given and X and Y chromosome and was born a man.  As a man, I have less of a need for toilet paper than women.  Also, as a man, when I go abroad my roommate are also men and also have a decreased need for toilet paper.  So, if we are assigned an apartment without toilet paper, we may or may not have avoided buying any to this day.  One day, it turns out that I WAS in need of toilet paper and my genetic code had screwed me over.  There was not toilet paper.  There was a roll of paper towels, but I wasn't about to be the guy who clogged the toilet with paper towels.  I decided to suck it up and use the bidet.  Supposedly, you are supposed to squat above it, well that didn't work.  I slipped and ended up sitting on the rim, wondering what I did to deserve this, as the cold water assaulted me.  Once I finished cleaning, I waddled across the room to dry off.  Then, I had to wash my hands.  This just seems so inconvenient.  But, hey it's an adventure.

Class-wise, we went to tour a coffee factory.  They roast coffee beans, and barley (you can make coffee out of roasted barley...it has less caffeine (what's the point then?) and tastes kind of weird without sugar.)  This factory, was more of a warehouse in the middle of the Tuscan fields, but in a kind of sketchy way, not in the "Under the Tuscan Sun" way. We walk around back and are greeted by a man who looked like the love child (I need a new term, suggestions?) of George Clooney and Mitt Romney.  He didn't speak any English but kept making jokes and looking very proud/sly while flirting with our translator.  We called him Uncle Mario.  We were hoping to pick the most stereotypical Italian male name and I decided I wanted to be related to him, but not his brother or son.  Turns out it was Leonardo, close enough.  Anyways, Uncle Mario explained that his coffee was half robusta and half arabica and gave us all a cup from freshly roasted beans and another cup from freshly roasted barley. 

In the back is a gradient of barely roasted coffee beans to dark roasted coffee and in the front you have barely roasted barley to roasted coffee.

On the way back, we took the public bus, which was crowded.  I ended up standing in the back kind of surfing, a challenge far beyond my skill set.  The bus magically turned around a tight corner at a fast pace and I went tumbling into one of the poles that people hold onto.  Turns out, these poles aren't meant to support the entire weight of an American guy.  It broke.  I broke Italy.  Well, didn't really break so much as temporarily ruined.  It was fixable. 

Back in Siena, we decided to head out to Florence.  We had to try and figure out how to actually buy bus tickets in a foreign language.  Between our collective knowledge of French, Latin, and Spanish we did it BOOM!  An hour later we arrive near the center of Florence.  We spent the next two hours walking through Florence, through the country side of Florence, and up an ungodly amount of hills.  It was a beautiful walk with some amazing views but it was still a two hour walk with like a 40 pound backpack on. 

The river in Florence and a random bust.

That evening, we went to a palace that was plastered in beautiful art.  We went up to the top of the palace and looked out at Florence and saw everything lit up at night.  It was wild to think that centuries ago, people did the exact same thing and saw pretty much the same scene, just minus electric lights and cars and stuff.  It was also really upsetting to find out/realize that SO MUCH art/architecture was lost during WWII.  Apparently, walls were built around the highly valued pieces in Florence and around Europe (In Germany, they hid pieces in underground beer cellars.)  A special force was also created to ensure that certain pieces, like The David, weren't destroyed.  When I finally passed out in my bed, I was in heaven.  Compared to the super hard bed and shower without pressure in our apartment back in Siena, the bed I'm staying in, and the shower I'm using, were Godly.

The Duomo from the clock-tower in Florence.

Today, our feet and legs took even more of a beating and we went to see The Duomo, The Academia (the home of The David), and another art museum.  They're big on art here in Florence.  The Duomo was breath-taking from the outside and amazing on the inside. Unfortunately, we didn't go into the dome, and we only saw a portion of it, but the sheer size of the church and the dome was incredible.  The David literally caused me to just stand still for nearly 20 minutes.  His hands were awkwardly large, he was incredibly ribbed, and unlike the rest of the statues, his eyes were actually filled in.  Also, just the size of The David is crazy.  It's like two stories.  The rest of the art in The Academia and in the other art museum was pretty interesting but after roughly 5 hours of looking paintings, I began to stop appreciating things.  Points I took away:

• The Medici family was insanely wealthy.  The second art museum was in one of their houses and had multiple halls filled with statues and portraits of royals and also had frescos.  
• I dislike medieval art.
• I need to do more research about "the massacre of the innocents" so a lot of art becomes more than just dead baby jokes.
• Saint Michael is pretty cool judging by his depictions

Famous things I saw over the past few days:

• The Duomo
• The Birth of Venus
• The David

• 

  Not the real David, but smaller replica outside the clock-tower.

   
• Probably loads of other things that I didn't realize.

The view from our house.

Sorry for the long post.  There's still a lot left to talk about, but this has dragged on way too long.  Here are some pictures for making it through.  Cheers to the daily adventure.

The view from the street near our house.

Florence, from the way up to our house.

 

The Duomo.

A crappy picture of the visible part of the inside of the dome of the Duomo.

A sunset in Florence.

OH MY GOD

OK, so this is going to be a really quick blog because I have a lot to blog about but about 20 minutes to fit it in.  So instead, this one is going to focus on just how amazing this is.  I'm in an absolutely gorgeous house (pictures to come later tonight) with literally breathtaking views.  Florence, from where we are staying, looks like heaven on earth.  There's THE Duomo (dome) which is this huge church in the center of the city and you can see the dome over the rest of the town. Anyways, we arrived in Florence safely (no one got taken) and decided to walk to the property where we are staying.  What should have been a 40 minute walk, turned into two hours because we got lost so many times, it was pretty comical.  Lesson learned: If you're going down hill, you're wrong. 

We ended up walking down a private street in a gated community where each house was HUGE and had their own vineyard.  By the time we reached the end of the wrong private road, we were delirious with fatigue and kept making jokes about being taken (reference to the movie) so when the woman who was supposed to let us into the property wouldn't answer and we were being followed by an old man and were surrounded on the other side by two young men who didn't speak English, we were pretty sure that Liam was going to have to come save us.  But, then we became concerned for the woman who was supposed to let us into the house because when we finally got a hold of her phone, instead of the sweet American woman we had been speaking to, an angry Italian man started shouting...But, turns out she wasn't taken, we were just lost/calling the wrong number. 

So I'm kind of just rambling because we literally just sat down in the house where we are staying and it is obscenely opulent.  The rooms are huge and incredibly decorated with a rustic theme.  So there will be more about Florence and early today later tonight or tomorrow.

Sorry for the rushed, and chaotic post, to make it up to you, here are four pictures (that's all I could upload while I was typing this).

Coffee, Tea, Tiramisu, and Heaven

First of all, check out this link. This is where I'll be staying this weekend when I go to Florence!  AH-MAY-ZING!  So now that that is out of the way, I'll talk a bit about what we did today.  
It was an absolutely beautiful day today, which is great because it's been freezing (well, not actually but colder than I was hoping for.)   I meandered around for a while before class and found this amazing view outside the walls of Siena.

A little research on Siena finds that it's one of the oldest cities in Europe.  Not really important or populated until about 400 AD, Siena has had a checkered past of struggles of power between nobility and Christian leadership.  Multiple walls have been built around the city, the main entrance of which, looks like this:

There are so many fountains and churches in this town.  A few of the fountains look like this:

In our cooking lesson we made a pate (which was a lot better than expected for chicken liver), Gnocchi with a gorgonzola sauce, a turkey roll, and tiramisu).  So, liver and moldy cheese, not nearly as bad as imagined (actually quite enjoyable).  Tiramisu was amazing (three servings!).  And, as always, a few lessons about coffee and tea condensed from 12 pages of notes:

•  Coffee has been associated with accelerated loss of calcium from bones.
• Theoretically, green or black tea could be made from the same leaves.
• Poor quality coffee (robusta) should be darker roast to mask the poor aromas and natural flavors with those created in the roasting, while high quality coffee (arabica) should be a more mild roast to allow the natural aromas to dominate.
• Decaf was invented in 1908 in Germany
• You can't make iced tea with regular tea otherwise it becomes cloudy because the caffeine and another molecule in the tea bind and become a solid. 

Cheers to the daily adventure.