A very tilted weekend!

Friday:
For my food and culture class we had a field trip this Friday to a dairy farm outside the Florence city walls. I slept through the entire bus ride due to my precautionary Dramamine and woke up in the country!
We exited the bus and went into what looked like an organic supermarket- I got very excited. The owner of the land (hundreds of acres), gave us a little talk about his supermarket and land. He only spoke Italian so our teacher had to translate what he was saying. His farm is a large international cheese exporter and has a wide variety of all different cheeses that are made on site. We went outside to the 'barn' where we saw cows! There was a gigantic one with a ring through it's nose, so silly, and there were also little calves running around! It was sad to see many of these cow's head's were looked into the fence that was housing them so that they would eat the hay. These cows are used strictly for production- a.k.a. they were going to produce milk, or become a cheeseburger :(. After that, we went up to the horse barn. I was also a little nervous about that because apparently there are a number of people here who eat horse meat! ah, not ok by me. Thankfully these horses are just for leisure, not for consumption. They were all very pretty and we even saw a Clydesdale. I tried to talk to the animals to get their attention, but then I remembered that they don't speak English! I tried my Italian on them, but no such luck. After that, we went back into the grocery store and had a tasting! We got to try 3 different cheese, I think 1 was Parmesan, 1 was mozzerlla, and I'm not sure what the 3rd was. We also got to try the local focaccia- very tasty, thinner than the one in Florence, with oil and salts on top. There was also 1 type of salami and another type of meat that tasted like sopresetta. And we got to try some desserts! One was an apple crisp type pastry and the other was a nutty bread.
After the tasting (which our teacher told us not to fill up on because we had a big lunch coming up?), we got a chance to shop around the supermarket and make any purchases we needed to. I found kamut organic rice crackers!- and quickly bought them.
After that we got back on the bus and made out way over to the monestary we were going to have our typical Tuscan lunch in. The monestary was beautiful, and we learned that there are rooms avaliable to rent overnight. Apparently some people like to come there and reflect because it is a very peaceful place, and you can see the city from its position up on the hill. Staying in a monestary- not my first choice, I think I would feel like God was watching me the whole time, not that he isn't always- well you get the point!
We went into the dining room- it was a large rectangular room with big cement benches with cushions and grand wooden tables rooted into the floor. There was also a large replica of the last supper painting on the wall. When my teacher said typical Tuscan lunch, I stand to correct him because it was a freaking feast!! It included the following:
Bottled wine, sparkling, and natural water on each table
Appetizers: cheeses, bruschetta, proscuitto, olive patte, bread
First Plate: Artichoke risotto (my absolute favorite) & Lemon pasta (it was actually yellow colored!- not so yummy)
Second Plate: Pork chops & Baked seasoned potato slices
After meal: Biscotti, meant to be dipped in some sort of after dinner liquor (I ate all of the cookies and my friends did shots of the liquor) & Espresso
It was an insane meal! I love this class :)

Saturday:
Me and my friend Alex got up early and got on the train to Pisa by 10:37am. We were there no more than an hour later and arrived to beautiful 57degree weather, with sun. We saw a few other American girls (you quickly become friends with anyone speaking English here) and learned how to get on the bus from the train station to get to the leaning tower. After missing the stop and riding the bus back around we finally found out stop. There leaning tower, along with the Duomo and a few other historical buildings, are 'gated' in by these huge brick walls surrouding on all sides. The Duomo and other historical buildings were beautiful and the tower really was leaning! I must admit that it was a lot smaller than I had expected but still fun to see. After attempting to taking "holding the leaning tower up" picture for about 20mins and quickly giving up, we ate a little lunch on the side of the Duomo. After buying a leaning shot glass (come on, I had to), Alex and I decided we could easly walk back to the train station. Wrong- we got quite lost, but I had to say I was happy we got lost because the weather was sooo beautiful and we stumbled upon a lot of different ruins adn got to explore the adorable city of Pisa. As soon as we fianlly found the train station- it started raining! Luck was on our side :)
It was a nice relaxing weekend; a lot differnt from what next weekend should be like...

Gregg- keep your eyes peeled for one of my next posts- I AM GOING TO VENICE NEXT WEEKEND FOR CARNIVAL!!
Missing everyone xoxo
- Amanda