Il Primo di Maggio, tutto e CHIUSO

The past week was probably the best thusfar, despite it being midterm week. The weather was gorgeous all week, Gustapanino was back open and the only homework we had was to write a paper and study for our Italian midterm.

Monday: Italian and Photo Class
Lunch: Gusta
Dinner: Small Plate of Pasta w/ red eggplant sauce. Zucchini and Marscapone Fritatta. Milka Chocolate Bar.
Highlights: Getting an I <3 Gustapanino Sticker!

Tuesday: Italian and Mauro
Lunch: Gusta, Gelato from Santa Trinita (Stratciatella and Cookies)
Dinner: Guests tonight! Walked in the kitchen right as 2 ladies and Claudia were popping the SPUMANTE! Animated dinner. Dish of Raw Artichokes and Avocado in Lemon and Oil sauce. Cooked veggie mix on couscous. Vegetarian "Saetan" creation. Delicious.
Highlights: Maura being 20 minutes late, class getting to enjoy the 80 degree weather in front of San Lorenzo and met up with Greg from Wayland and went to Twice, a club where lots of dancing was going on.

Wednesday: Two hours of Italian (1 make up hour)
Lunch: Gusta (can't get enough!)
Dinner: Left out by Claudia was Linguine with a creamy sauce, Grilled prosciuto and cheese (literally). Melted chocolate chips we found into the leftover rice pudding type cake we had the night before.
Highlights: Stayed at Eurocentres from 12-6 studying for the midterm. Wrote 75% of Turner paper.

Thursday: Italian and Photo
Lunch: Gusta (No crudo today b/c I got a HUGE charlie horse in the middle of the night from what we believe was high salt intake and dehydration, not fun!)
Dinner: Steamed artichokes with pancetta and oil. Cooked Zucchini concoction with Faro. Cooked eggplant concoction with Couscous. Red wine because Claudia had another dinner guest! (we only get wine when guests come)
Highlights: Seeing a slideshow of Professors photographs, very impressive. Thinking the italian midterm was PRETTY easy. The Faro :o) NOM NOM NOM. We also discovered Paperback Exchange, a bookstore that buys back, makes exchanges and sells english books for very cheap. We love reading here so it was a nice find!

Friday: Italian, La Notte Bianca, 85 degrees and SUNNY, no chance of Rain.

Went to class, where half of both classes were gone do to weekend travel to Munich. Read an intersting and 80% truthful article Francesca printed out for us in Italian about drunk Americans in Firenze.

Gusta Panino, derrr. Then we went to this place recently discovered called Mama's Bakery, which is an american bakery a block away from school that sells bagels, brownies, muffins, cupcakes, and other non italian delicacies. People have been craving american food recently so a few cupcakes were bought and shared. Then as we made plans for what we were going to do that night for the Notte Bianca we decided we also needed Gelato b/c American cupcakes just really can't be compared to anything Italian which we realized again. It was nice to have a taste of home though. So Hannah and Alison took us to their favorite Gelateria, La Carraia, which is just on the corner near the other bridge, not Ponte Trinita. I had Stratciatella and Fondente, and I agreed that La Carraia was one of the better gelaterias, huge amount for 1.50 and great taste. I now prefer La Carraia to Santa Trinita which is many people's favorite. As we ate our melting Gelato quickly we decided that we would picnic that night in the Cascine park, I was to meet Alex and Dan outside the horticulteral garden in our neighborhood at 5:30 to go find a supermercato and meet everyone at Cascine at 6.

Went back home around 2, finished up my Turner paper so I would be work free until Tuesday, took a long nap then rushed to meet the boys. We started walking toward Cascine not finding a supermarket anywhere, so we ended up having to go past the park, making us very late, but we asked someone where a supermarket was and we were able to buy two loaves of whole grain freshly baked bread, an etto (?Mom?) of mortadella, little roasted chickens, two hunks of cheese (provolone and brie) two giant bottles of red table wine, 1.5 liters of water, a gatorade, a tea and a carton of strawberries for 18 and some change. It was quite the bargain for a wonderfully planned picnic.

We ate, relaxed and had a wonderful time sitting on a grassy patch inside the cascine. Around 9 everyone met us who had eaten with their host families and we headed toward SMN and in town to see what was going on in the Piazzas for La Notte Bianca. When we arrived you could tell the atmosphere was different. Usually there are a ton of people in centro every night, but tonight there were MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF PEOPLE. There were stages set up at SMN and Piazza della Republicca. Music was playing, street preformers were out. I got to try and blow out a clown's torch that he had done a juggling act with. My small lung capacity was not match for the lit torch that was probably heavily soaked in lighter fluid, but i'm sure it was entertaining trying to watch me blow it out. Around 12 we were craving ice cream, and I mean ice cream, not Gelato. We had walked past Ben & Jerry's and the smell that emanated was just SO good we had to get some. I felt a little guilt, but when it was only 2.50 for a huge cone with two different flavors I didn't think it was too bad. And I just can't help but love chocolate chip cookie dough and chocolate fudge brownie, so it was worth it! After we all wolfed down our ice cream, we headed our separate ways very tiredly and preparing to wake up early to catch the train to Certaldo where we would be staying Saturday night.

Saturday: Primo di Maggio

Woke up at 8:00, ate breakfast (yogurt with a few cocoa krispies, yum) then caught a bus at 8:50 to get to SMN. Half way there I realized I forgot my train ticket, I contemplated getting off the bus, but I knew I wouldn't be able to make it back in time to catch the train to Certaldo at 9:27, so 4.20 euro went down the drain... Met everyone at the station, got a new ticket, validated it, found the right track number then got on the train headed towards Empoli where we would for some reason have to get off and take a bus to get to Certaldo. When we arrived in Empoli we were tempted to stay because there was a large fest with music and balloons going on right outside the train station, but we had told the hotel to pick us up at 11:00, so we got on the bus to arrive at Certaldo station at 11:00.

When we arrived we waited no less than 5 minutes for the hotel car to arrive. We had to take 3 separate cars to all fit because their van had broken down, but it wasn’t a problem and we arrived at Fattoria Bassetto within 10 minutes from when we arrived in Certaldo.



We checked in and explored the premises, put our bags in our rooms, checked out the bathroom (which had a great view when sitting on the toilette), explored the cabinets of the kitchen and then walked around the outside and then decided to walk to Certaldo. Took us about 25 minutes to walk to the top of the hill where Certaldo Alto sat. The vista from the city was absolutely gorgeous, and the tiny enotecas placed sporadically down the main drag added to the quaint effect of the small hill town. We explored every corner of the tiny town, walked down a small ally where I noticed a delicious smell was coming from and we stumbled upon a gorgeous restaurant with a terrace that had primo piatti for under 9 euro. As a table 8 out of 10 of us ordered the Spinach Ravioli filled with ricotta and spinach and covered in a creamy oil and sage sauce. We only got 3 large raviolios, but it was fine because it made us savor the taste. We also drank 8 bottles of water and a few people got delicious looking contornis and bruschetta.


After lunch we walked through the town one more time, then decided we would go down into the more modern Certaldo and find a supermarket where we could buy ingredients for our dinner back at Fattoria Bassetto. We searched the entire town only to be disappointed by every new road we walked down because all of the doors were closed and EVERYTHING was closed. We knew holidays were important to the italians, but we were unaware of what Primo Di Maggio (labor day) meant. The only thing we could find open was a Gelateria, so we had some gelato as we contemplated what our choices were for that nights dinner. We realized we would have to walk back up and dine in another restaurant in Certaldo Alto because that is where the only stores and restaurants were open. After talking for a little while, people started remembering seeing pasta and cold cuts here and there, so Anna and I were nominated to hike back up the hill and find the right complements to make a meal.



We found a small shop where wine and a few other products were being sold. We explained to the storekeeper that we were in a bind because of it being Primo di Maggio and everything was closed, we wanted to picnic and we were on a budget. The store keeper immediately said that he would be more than happy to help, started listing things that we would need to have a good dinner and knocked the price of his cheapest 8euro wine, to 5 euro. We bought 3 bottles of his uncle's Chianti for 15 euro total, bought a large Salami for 15 euro, got a small chunk of pecorino for free, and spent 10 euro on another large hunk of pecorino and foccacia.

Although the guy at the first store helped us out greatly we still didn't have any pasta, so we had to go back to the main street of Certaldo Alto and continue the search for the perfect ingredients. We found an enoteca where they were selling lots of home made pasta, we bought 3 bags of a colorful home made pasta for 4.20 euro each, and spied a large bottle of white wine in their cooler that didn't appear for sale but we inquired anyways. The vino bianco was 4 euro so we bought two bottles of that along with the pasta, held off on the sauce because it was very expensive and we figured we could just make a butter and herb sauce with things that were already at Fattoria Bassetto. We took our purchases quite satisfied and started our hike back down the rocky terrain toward Fattoria Bassetto carrying 5 bottles of wine, 3 pounds of pasta, 2 hunks of cheese, a log of salami and a bag of foccacia, SUCCESS!

When we got back we relaxed for a while, played some cards and read outside, we took 25 minutes cat naps then started to prepare the dinner for 10. A little hesitant about how to make a pasta sauce with the ingredients we had, we picked 3 different kinds of herbs from the herb garden, one being chives for sure, the rest unknown (possibly oregano and rosemary). Avery and Phil started helping us out with the sauce while we boiled the pasta. We ended up having quite the fun adding half a bottle of white wine into the skillet, sautéing the herbs and then adding butter to the concoction along with salt and pepper to create one of the most interesting and best tasting sauces Italy has ever seen (NOT). But it really wasn't that bad, especially since we were hungry! We cut the cheese and salami, set the table, set the bowls of pasta out, opened the wine, sat down to dinner, made a toast and started inhaling the food that we worked so hard to prepare. It was a great dinner with great company, filled with lots of laughter and no regrets that we were missing Union College's Springfest back home. I think being at a Villa in Tuscany is going to top my first springfest experience and will tromp the ones to come as well!



After we finished our large feast we all just hung around outside for a while chatting and taking photographs. We we're a little lame and went to bed before midnight, but we were all perfectly content with the happenings of the day.

Sunday morning we woke up to the pitter patter of rain on the roof... great. Obviously it wanted to rain while we were in Siena for the second time, so we rearranged our plans and decided we would go walk through San Gimignano quickly, so we checked out at 11, arrived at the train station to figure out how to get there. We had to take a train to Poggibonsi then take a bus from Poggibonsi to San Gimignano, then to return to florence we would take a bus back to Poggibonsi then get a train to Florence. We waited an hour for a train to Poggibonsi, when we arrived we realized we had to wait another hour and a half to get the bus for San Gimignano, then we realized once we got there that we didn't know what times we would be able to get back with the stupid holiday bus and train time tables, so we walked around Poggibonsi trying to find SOMETHING to do, there was nothing because it was Sunday and a Holiday... double whammy, so we got on the next train back to FLorence a little bummed that the rain could control how much fun we had.

But we weren't disappointed with the weekend at all, it was definitely a very fun time. When we got back to Florence we all went to get a bite to eat together. I walked home in the rain, got soaking wet and was glad to be back at home to take a hot shower. Claudia left me floured chicken and steamed veggies for dinner, it was nice to have the house to myself for a relaxing sunday dinner, I watched a little television then went to bed!

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