Chianti finally

I've been teasing you with a mysterious "Chianti" title for awhile, and at this point it seems like old news to me, so I'll give a short rundown of that. Hopefully I'll at least get to touch on Barcelona before tonight because I'm going to see the ROMA V. MANCHESTER UNITED game, and I have a feeling that will take precedent!

The Chianti trip was an optional trip to an agriturismo resort in Tuscany (yes, for those of you who watch The Office and recall Dwight's agritourism farm he runs on the side, it was like that, only with olives and wine). It was intended to be a weekend of relaxing and enjoying the finer things, and it was... good Tuscan cuisine, wine straight from the source that put our typical euro-fifty fare to shame, beautiful landscape, all within the comforts of a quaint, family-run villa. We arrived the Friday after Thanksgiving; took the train to Florence and were driven to the villa in Chianti. Had lunch (a nice assortment of crostini to start out with, then Papa di Pomodoro, which was a really awesome (but incredibly heavy) dish of bread and tomato, similar to an English pudding. We got to tour the vineyard that afternoon-- in the cellar of a building whose oldest feature, the tower, dated back to Medieval times, and which the proprietor's grandfather bought 60 years ago when he fell in love with Tuscan agriculture.

Had some down time, then an informal wine-tasting lesson where we learnt to observe the color and residue as well as use scent and the different areas of the mouth to determine different qualities of different wines. We're pretty much all experts now. Had an excellent dinner, and a great (and early!) night's sleep in bigger beds than we've seen in ages. Continental breakfast the next morning, then a tour of the olive oil plant, which was in a smaller building a bit further away. They have a snazzy new machine that even their competitors pay to use, but they've preserved the old rooms and barrels from when they used more traditional methods. Had another great lunch and were off.

Woo hoo, finally got that taken care of. I know I keep saying this but... pictures later?