alanstrip: Firenze

Wow Florence! Lots of pictures up on here.

I loved Florence for many reasons. The first is the amazing hostel I stayed in. This hostel was clearly the best so far and was complete luxury for about 22 euro a night. It is named Plus Florence and I guess “Plus” has a chain of hostels around Europe that are all equally as nice. This hostel was 5 stories with a roof top terrace overlooking the entire city which was perfect for watching the sunset over Florence which I did every day. The first night I was there, there was a beautiful orange sunset on one view of the horizon, and on the opposite a raging thunderstorm with enormous lighting bolts illuminating the sky. This was absolutely surreal. This hostel also had a small workout area, an indoor pool, a sauna, Turkish bath, night club, restaurant, laundry, and load of fun events put on by the staff. For these many reasons my 3 day stay turned into 8. I also was really excited to be in the Toscana region obviously for historical reasons but for cultural reasons as well. I was fortunate enough to travel to the Uffizi gallery, Academia, The Medici Palace, The Basilica of San Lorenzo, and others. All the art was overwhelming at times but it was really nice to get to see the classical art and historical importance or the region. Obviously seeing David was a huge highlight because of his massive size and amazing detail. I also really enjoyed visiting the Medici Palace and church because I had just studied the Medici family during my last quarter at UC and so it was cool to get see some of the history I actually knew something about. I got to visit Cosimo the Elder’s burial site and the infamous treasure room, which blew me away. All the palaces and churches in Florence are a must see for anyone traveling in Europe. I had a great time just walking around and seeing the sites.

Chianti

One particular highlight for me was a bus tour I took to the Chianti region in Toscana. This was awesome! The tour originally was designed to go to a vineyard and pick some grapes for harvest, go through the process of refinement, see how they make the wine according to Chianti standards, and then taste the wine and move on to another winery for lunch and another series of tasting. But we changed the trips plans on the way to the winery because of rain warnings and stopped off first in a small town of San Gimignano. This was actually perfect because this town was small and full of local art and food and was a nice little place to get to see. They were acclaimed with the “Worlds greatest gelato” parlor so I had to try some out that and I also bought a bottle of wine to try. The tour guide was actually from Tuscany and was really funny and taught us all sorts of interesting things about Italy and wine and told us about the strict standards that Chianti wine is restricted to. There are 3 kinds: DOC, DOCG, and SuperTuscan. We got to try all three on the tour, the SuperTuscan obviously being the highest quality but by far the most dry. The owner of one of the wineries also taught us the “proper” way to taste wine so when I get back I’m sure ill be some sort of stuck up wino. Hahhaha just kidding. Luckily, the rain never came and by the time we got to the winery I was super stoked to go out into the vineyard and pick some grapes (unlike some of the rest of the group, but I think everyone enjoyed it in the end). This tour only goes during September 2 times a week so different tours get to pick different types of wine. We were picking the white grape while I was there but we still got to pick some red grapes and try as many as we wanted straight off the vine. We then put the grapes in a machine that separated them from the vine, then sent the juice into a distiller as we walked through the inside of the winery trying to figure out all the machinery. I loved this part of the tour. I would love to do this myself someday or learn more about it in general. We next ate lunch and tasted 4 different hearty helpings of wines. They had a Rosita that wasn’t nearly as sweet as the normal ones I’ve tried which I really liked. We then went to the next winery for a second tasting and go to try the SuperTuscan, a delicious type of olive oil with truffles in it, and a 30 year old balsamic vinegar. This balsamic was like syrup it was so delicious but was extremely expensive (like 50 euro for an 8 oz bottle). There were tuns of Aussies, Kiwis, and Americans at the hostel so I also met a bunch of people this day and had a great time doing it. Overall loved this tour and learned a lot.