Pisa & Verrazzano Castle

Yesterday we went to Pisa for a short day trip.  We visited the Pisa church, baptistry, cemetery, and leaning tower.  We learned from our tour that each town is focused around birth, life, and death.  Babies used to be baptized twice a year in which the entire town would gather for the two events.  The church is used weekly to hold services.  Inside the church was extravagant and decorated with a roman inspiration due to the round architecture.  We also learned that Galileo was born in Pisa and conducted one of the first experiments on the leaning tower.  Our tour guide explained the leaning tower was slowly tilting to the ground 1 millimeter each year until the building was secured a few years ago.  The reason why the tower is leaning is due to the soft soil it was built on.  Pisa is located close the sea water and over time the soil became soft and sunk causing the building to lean. After Pisa we returned to Florence and went to the grocery store! 

Today we went to Verrazzano Castle & Winery.  We toured the beautiful grounds and facility.  The Verrazzano Castle produces over 106,000 bottles of wine a year and was founded in 1170.  The winery is known for there Chanti wine and was one of the 1st to produce Chanti Wine.  We got to see the wine cellars, prosciutto cellar, and barrels of wine.  After the tour we sat down in a gorgeous room at the winery that overlooked breath taking views of the Tuscan hills.  We tasted 3 wines, red rosso, chanti, and a dessert wine (which tasted like whiskey) I was not a fan of the dessert wine!  We also ate lunch there and had one of the best meals so far.  We were served pasta, salad, prosciutto, salami, potatoes, quiche, sausage, & bread.  While numerous students decided to get drunk I enjoyed the food and company I was with.   After we returned to our apartment and napped for the afternoon. Finally I was able to Skype with my parents! (Probably my favorite part of the day)

Tomorrow we are planning on gathering school supplies, remaining house hold items, visiting an open air food market and cooking our first dinner together!  Make sure to check out pictures on Facebook.

Ciao!