Monday May 4, 2009

We started today with another yummy breakfast up at the main house before we checked out. You could easily spend a week here! From there we started the drive to the Chianti Sculpture Park that I read about in my guidebook. I don’t think we took the most direct route there (the GPS yelled “recalculating” at me multiple times) but we eventually found it.
We were greeted by a young woman who gave us the layout of the park and set us in the right direction to explore on our own. The park is set within a forest and features large modern sculptures by artists from five continents. It wasn’t as large as I was expecting but still a very cool experience. After walking through the park we walked across the road to the owners’ personal gallery set within their home before heading down the road to another nearby town.

Next stop was Gaiole in Chianti. A friend of mine, Lindsay Fry, spent a weekend here with her parents just two weeks before in this town and her pictures from it jump started the planning of our weekend in Tuscany. Since it was Monday the town was pretty sleepy but still pretty. We spent about 30 minutes walking through the town and the church then continued on our way.

Our last stop, Radda in Chianti. I discovered this town while reading one of the guidebooks set out at our agritourismo and it ended up being one of my favorites. Even though it was Monday there were still some shops and restaurants open with people walking around. We walked the main drag then stopped in a tiny meat/grocery store where we had fresh salami and pecorino sliced in front of us onto a crusty baguette. It was so simple but sooooo good! I don’t know why we didn’t think to have paninis made to order before! We ate our paninis in the sunny park and then headed back to Florence.

We arrived safely back in Florence and dropped off the car. Since it was mid-afternoon I figured we could walk to my mom’s hotel not realizing it was going to be a 30 minute walk with luggage over cobblestones. Oh well we made it and got her checked in to her cute room overlooking a courtyard at Hotel Dali. I left her there and headed home to my apartment.

Our school was throwing us an end of semester “goodbye dinner” tonight. My roommates and I walked down to school to meet with our advisor and other students then walked to a restaurant that was actually pretty close to our house, Il Teatro. Obviously our entire school couldn’t fit into one restaurant so a series of dinners were scheduled throughout the week at multiple restaurants. The dinner was very good but chicken cacciatore was served and it barely compared to our meal the night before.