Crazy small roads and a Large tour bus is bad news

So another free minute, another blog post. Last weekend we took a trip to Parma and Modena to see prosciutto, parmegiano, and Balmsamico farms. This may sound boring to some, but to a food nerd...amazing.

The whole trip honestly started on the wrong foot. Our faculty advisor stressed that we needed to be there at "5:00 am on the dot, the bus will leave without you!" turns out that was not the case. We ended up leaving around 6:00 so essentially we woke up an hour early to sit at an empty bus stop, fun. After that litte bump in the road we headed to Parma to see an actual parmegiano regiano farm, which was pretty incredible. It was family owned and they work 7 days a week. Thats right, 365 days a year, no exception. It allows them to turn out about 6-8 wheels of cheese per day and they all love it. The whole process is a little lengthy(and maybe boring to most of you), but I'll explain it later if you really want to know.

After the parm farm we headed to a prosciutto farm which was equally as impressive. We learned the entire curing process and got to see halls of meat that had been aging for anywhere between 4 months to a year. We also got to eat lunch there, a huge plate of, you guessed it, cured meats. It was all delicious and I ended up buying a nice chunk of salame de Felino for myself.

After the prosciutto we headed to Modena to see an actual old school balsamico farm. This was probably the most interesting as we got to tour the barrel rooms where balsamic vinegar had been aging for anywhere between 6 months and 50 years. We also got to taste some of the 1, 6, 12, and 25 year vinegars, as well as a variety of other flavors which were spectacular. It was very interesting, pretty incredible to think that a person would be setting up a batch of vinegar to age 50 years and most likely never get to see the end result.

After Modena we headed back to Firenze. It strange that Firenze is kind of taking place as a makeshift "home" while were here. Anyways, this post may be a little boring, but I'm heading to Bologna this weekend which should be a nice trip. I also got to plan my post study trip and I can assure that the best has definitely yet to come.

FLickr Flickr Flcikr http://www.flickr.com/photos/50233644@N03/sets/72157624040555889/

Forgot to mention there are a bunch of pictures of our dinner at the Osteria Triperia, which was a tripery. Everything was made of tripe, which is cow intestine if you didn't know. Not bad, but me and my buddy decided that stomachs are probably not designed to digest stomachs as we both got pretty bad sleep the next night.

Cinque Terre = AWESOME, fish organs = BAD

Well, I've found that it's pretty much impossible to stay on top of this blog thing while I have class/sightseeing to do, so everything I post on here is a couple days behind when I actually did it.

First I must mention the dinner at Ciro and Sons. It was our big group dinner that was completely paid for by WSU and it was pretty amazing. We didn't have a choice of what to order, as all of our food came family style, but it was all delicious. Gnocchi, risotto with porcini mushrooms, a giant Bistecca Fiorentina (T-bone steak), and chocolate souffle for dessert. It all tasted great and the staff was very accommodating to our group of 18 people.

We took a trip to the Cinque Terre sometime back and it was incredible. Perfect day, about 78 degrees or so with hardly any clouds in the sky. We started by taking a train to La Spezia, one of the first of five towns, and I could tell that the trip was going to be amazing. We waited there for about an hour for the train that would take us to Monterosso.

After leaving La Spezia we headed to Monterosso where we would be stopping for lunch/dinner. The restaurant was call CIAK, and seemed to be an asian-ish influenced seafood restaurant. We ordered a few family style dishes (which in my opinion is getting very annoying), but the overall experience was great. The shrimp and pomodoro raviolo were very tasty. The second dish was a fish soup which essentially took everything you could think of from the ocean (fish, octopus, shrimp, langoustine, etc), and put it all in a pot...whole. Thats right, so the all the animals had faces as well as having there inner organs completely intact. Most of it was pretty delicious, including the fish eyes, but the organs tasted horrid.

We left Monterosso and head for our hostel in the last town of Levanto. The town was actually pretty small, more of an actual neighborhood type of place, and the hostel we stayed at was pretty nice. We woke up in the morning and took a hike from Levanto back to Monterosso and got some incredible pictures. After hiking up and down a giant ass mountain we reached the beach in Monterosso where we all just relaxed for the rest of the day. We tried some limoncello, as it was the lemon festival, and then headed home on the fast train.

Another cool thing to note was on one of the traditions on the paths we walked. A guy and girl would place a love on this little fence thing and then kiss and throw the key to the lock over the edge down to the ocean. The result? hundreds, if not maybe close to thousands, of locks placed along the path.

All in all the the trip was amazing and it was the perfect way to end the short break before classes. again, the flickr link is here where you can see all the stellar pictures.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50233644@N03/sets/72157624127124020/

Piazza di Michelangelo and our welcome dinner at Ganzo

Sorry for the lack of posts. Getting into the swing of things has been difficult, not to mention I had to find a place to rent a wifi adapter thing for my computer. A lot has happened since I posted last, so I'll probably plit it into two separate posts.

First off I would like to reiterate how amazing Firenze is. Most of the people are nice, the town is beautiful and there is more food here than you could ever imagine. The last night I spent by myself I decided to head up to the Piazza di Michelangelo and see the view that everyone had been talking about. It turned out to be just as amazing as everyone had described. It was a great day outside so I statyed and watched the sunset, which was awesome, and then headed home for bed.

The following day everyone else began to arrive in Firenze, which was a nice change. We all checked into our apartments, which turned out to be much nicer than I expected. We have a fully furnished kitchen, living room, dining area, and two bedrooms. I was the first to arrive at the casa and staked my claim in the larger room with a spectacular view of the Sante Croce church. After quickly unpacking we all got prepared for the welcome dinner at Ganzo, which is where our internship hours will be taking place the next 6 weeks. The dinner was pretty stellar, orecchiette pasta with pesto potatoes and green beans, roasted pork loin with rosemary potatoes, and a very nice berry pana cotta for dessert. It was very nice to sit and talk and eat with everyone.

After dinner we toured the city a little bit, and then decided to call it a night. The next post will be much more interesting as it covers not only our 750 euro dinner at Ciro and sons, but also my trip to Cinque Terre. For now though, I must go eat at Ganzo as we discovered that we get 4 free dinners a week meaning we should only have to cook for ourselves friday, saturday and sunday. Heres the link to the Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/50233644@N03/sets/72157624101461792/

First day in Firenze

Finally found a moment to try out this blog thing, so I hope you all appreciate the effort. As I may have already told you, I ended up getting to my hostel at about 9pm. The taxi was easy enough to find and luckily I had written down the address because the driver didn't speak English. After a night of drinking prosecco (delicious sparkling white wine), some beer at an Irish pub, and then walking around the city I decided to go to bed and get an early start in the morning.

I woke up around 7:30 and had some surprisingly good free breakfast at my hostel. I then set out with one goal in mind, get lost. I succeeded quite efficiently at this and ended up walking around for about 5 hours. I saw a lot of amazing things, the Piazza del Duomo, Basilica di San Lorenzo, Opera di Sante Croce, and the Ponte Vecchio just to name a few. The town is mind blowing, everything is huge, old, and full of history.

The only place I actually decided to pay the money to tour was the Basilica de San Lorenzo which is a huge building that has a cathedral, Library, and treasure room/Museum. When I was buying the ticket I made the mistake of showing the "two" sign with my fingers as I was trying to communicate that i wanted to see both parts of the tour. Ended up buying two tickets to both things so it cost 12 euro instead of 6, lesson learned. The Basilica is the burial place of the Medici family as well as housing the coffin of Donatello. Some parts photography was allowed, others it was not. Unfortunately in the cathedral photography wasn't allowed, which is a bummer because it was pretty amazing.

After all my touring I sat outside a bar and had some wine with a really nice old man from Pennsylvania.  I woke up the next morning with two main goals, buy a belt from the leather market, and find my apartment. I managed to accomplish the first task relatively easily, but got side tracked and ended up bartering with one of the leather market guys for about a half an hour. The bad news, I ended up buying a super nice jacket for 200 euro(thanks mom, it went on the grey credit card, we'll discuss if its a present or if I pay you back later lol). The good news, I bartered it down from 480 Euro so it was actually a great deal.

After my purchases I ran away from the leather market to avoid any other spending and found my way to the apartment. It looks nice enough, the picture above is of the door to my complex, its on one of the main roads which is nice. I decided to eat at the pizza place across from my apartment and by chance met a girl from USC who was on her last day of study abroad. She told me about all her favorite places in the city and her favorite day trips she took which was a ton of useful information. She also told me about this place called the Piazzale di Michelangelo which apparently has the best view of city which is where I will be going tonight, so expect some awesome pictures next post.

Anyways, much to see and much to do, the link below is to the facebook album from my first days in Firenze hope you like them.http://www.flickr.com/photos/50233644@N03/sets/72157623947544663/
~Alex