Chianti Field Trip!

My apologiez for the late posts BUT you'll understand why after reading the next few. This one is dedicated to LAST FRIDAY's day trip to Chianti with the school!! Palazzo Rucellai split up its students into four groups (mainly based on university back at home) and bussed us out to the countryside to learn about wine making, wine tasting, how to live in a castle that has no heat or light, and which part of the chianti landscape makes the best background in pictures.

My fellow Penn Staters and I piled onto our coach bus and began the ride. Christine and I were our usual energetic selves while everyone else around us was getting nauseous from the ride and/or the aftereffects of their previous night...

It took about an hour to get to Chianti. We pulled up in front of a magnificent stone castle where we were ushered into an outdoor courtyard and met an English speaking woman who led our tour. There she warned us not to be scared if we saw a weird little guy and surely we did. She introduced us to a strange little man dressed in garb one would expect from a time long ago.

hottie

We learned that this little man (whose name escapes me) is 87 years old and has lived at the same castle since he was 20. He was signed into service at the castle for the family living there at the time in a contract that bound him to the land and to his work there. When the property passed to the next family they released him from his contract but he decided to stay, opting to wear the same exact outfit every day for the next 50 years. How weird!

what a cute couple!

We went on a tour of the castle which I have no pictures of because it is still inhabited by a family and our picture snapping wasn't allowed in their private residence. What I CAN tell you is that it was unbelievable inside. Tall ceilings and all stone everywhere. There's 37 rooms in the castle (classifying it as a SMALL castle...to whose standards?!?!) and a small church where they have services for just the family! As beautiful as it was inside I don't think I could rough it like this family clearly does. There's no heat or light in the castle. Each room has a gargantuan fireplace. One was lit and running and it did make the room quite cozy but nothing like real heat...

After we exited the living quarters of the castle we headed to the basement/dungeon where the olive oil refinery/winery was. I've never seen the actual machinery that goes into wine and olive oil making so that was really interesting. It felt like we went down stairs for hours before arriving at all the different rooms. All I kept thinking was how much fun me and ceeceewayans would have had in this place when we were younger.....who am I kidding? we still would have a blast.

After the tour we were escorted to a delicious lunch in the castle and learned how to wine taste. Thanks to my wine connoisseur parents I already knew the techniques! Christine and I labeled it Swirl, Sniff, Sip! The lunch was deeeelish as would be expected. cHeCk iiT 0uT!

YUM!

After lunch we made a quick stop in the gift shop selling house made wine and olive oil and then headed further into the countryside for some photo ops. Even though it was pretty silly that they bussed us out there just to take pictures for an hour, it still was really beautiful.

roomz in chianti!

Then we came home! On to the next post!