Next stop was off to the stables in Chianti, Tuscany! I did a horseback riding tour through the company Florencetown, which I highly recommend. I also met two American girls and two Canadian girls on the tour (which was a small group of 7), and we all hit it off from the beginning and had a blast! As fun as traveling alone is, it was nice to hang out with girls my own age for a while.
This was the view from the stables:
Right?! It was incredibly gorgeous. I took tons of pictures of the Tuscan countryside while we rode through the vineyards owned and operated by the Corsini family, who is apparently very prominrnt and filthy rich.
They gave me one of the more stubborn horses since I have riding experience, and using my grandpa's wisdom I put my heels down, sat up straight, took charge of Cheyenne and had a blast! (Even if I was stuck riding English style..)
The leisurely ride ended at a small villa up in the hills of Tuscany. This was where we were served a "Tuscan" lunch using vegetables grown from their garden, and olive oil and wine produced right there in the vineyard. I'm not that into wine, but it was a pretty awesome experience. Here is just a small portion of our lunch:
After lunch and the wine tasting, we went on a tour of the winery and learned about the process for making the wine for THIS vineyard (apparently there are several). According to our guide, the Corsini family makes the best wine in Tuscany! (He could be biased though. I honestly wouldn't know the difference.)
These jars are anywhere hetween 200-300 years old with wine frok then. Hikes!
The view from the garden outside the villa. No big deal.
The last stop of our day was a small gelateria on the way back to Florence, where I got the two flavors "bacio" (chocolate hazlenut) and "pinoli" (pine nuts - very interesting and very delicious). All the gelato at this place is made fresh daily. Yeah, okay Italy. You're kind of awesome.
After returning from my day trip, I decided to do a little sightseeing. First up with the famous Duomo. Guys, it's huge. I looked around inside for a bit and then did the popular thing: climbed up tto the top of the tower. By the by, that was 414 steps to the top. But this view was unbelievably worth it:
Here you can see Palazzo Vecchio.
And here we have the landmark dome of the Duomo. Stunning.
I continued my journey and headed to Basilica de Santa Croce, where there is a statue of Dante out front. Also, Machiavelli, Galileo, and Michelangelo all have tombs there. What.
Moved on to the Galileo Science Museum. Nerd alert. It was crazy cool and I took a billion pictures thst I'll probably look at with my dad later.
Next? Palazzo Vecchio. Which was beautiful inside. It was a castle of sorts and has that big tower you always see in pictures of Florence (like mine earlier in this post). You CAN climb the tower...but I had had enough stairs for one day.
In the evening I sat down in my room to plan out my last two days in Florence, then hesded out to meet up with the two Canadian girls (Jenna and Alice) to hang out for a bit at their hostel. We ended up talking for a long while with their new roommate Patrick, an artist from southeastern London. We made plans to go together to climb up Piazzale Michelangelo to eat dinner and watch the sunset over the city tomorrow night. I cannot wait.
Traveling is awesome, people.
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