Slept in this morning and it was awesome! Went down to breakfast and came back up to pack up for Florence! We had a reservation in Tuscany for a wine tour and tasting! Yay!! I took sometime the past few days looking up various places and was happy to find Castello Il Palagio it was a cute looking place, had a driver that would take us from the train station straight to the castle and it was decently priced! We checked out of the hotel and took the ferry to the train station making it within minutes! That was a little nerve racking ;)
It was about an hour to an hour and a half ride and once we got to Florence we had some time to kill until the driver picked us up so we decided to stop in a café just outside the station for some lunch. We all got some delicious pasta dishes and a round of beers. We even got some gelato for desert! Yum!! After that we headed back to the station and met Giovanni our driver :) He was very nice and helped us with our bags and we we're off.
We talked with him along the way and he pulled over two or three times to let us take pictures! We got a great shot of the Duomo from the hill and he even stopped and told us about a monastery. It was a great ride until just in front of us we witnessed a car accident on the turn off ramp. It was really really scary! I had forgotten the intensity of a car accident and seeing that in front of us really riled me up and brought me back to my car accident. I sort of lost it and began bawling. Giovanni got out and called 9-1-1 and a couple other cars stopped too to help out.
It was quite an intense part of the trip and still very scary and sad to look back on. Giovanni was great though and handled the situation really well. It was weird feeling so helpless in that situation because we couldn't speak the language. I counted my blessings Giovanni had let us stop to take pictures because it was a mere two cars in front of us, we really had an angel watching over us that day.
We got to the castle and I ran to the bathroom when I got out the lady instructing the wine tasting had a glass of water waiting for me. Giovanni had explained to them why we were late and what we had witnessed. Once I had calmed down we set out to tour the Castle. It was a small little place really quaint. The vineyards were huge though and they specialized in olive oils too! It was way more personal feeling compared to the one we had done with the school. It was just me, my mom, and Gerry with the lady who worked there. She brought us around the place, let us take pictures and ask questions. We got to see the cellar with all the different barrels inside. It was really fascinating! She told us all about how Tuscany is an area in Italy and Chianti is a smaller area of Tuscany and even smaller in that area is the Chianti Classico area which the Castle we were touring was a part of and very proud to be specific to that area.
After we toured the Castle she brought us up to a dinning room with a bunch of tables set up. It looked like a family had just finished before us. We got to try out four different wines. A bottle of Pinot Grigio, Chianti Classico, Chianti Classico Reserve, and a dessert wine a.k.a Grappa. We got a small plate of toasted bread with cheese and salami to sample the wine with. It was really cool, I liked the Chianti Classico Reserve the best, she even let us keep the wine we didn't finish :D
After the wine tasting we went down to the store and picked up a few extra bottles to share on holidays with the family and then headed back to the train station. We hung out around the train station for a about a half hour and then took the train back to Rome. It was nice because not a lot of people were on the train and it was really quiet.
We got back to Termini in Rome the train station and walked to Mom and Ger's hotel. I kind of forgot how far it was when we were walking with three bags and wine… lol it was a bit of a struggle and we probably looked pretty ridiculous, but eventually we made it :) We checked in, dropped their bags off, and headed out to find some dinner. There was a really cute brick oven pizza place right across from their hotel so we decided to make things easy and just eat there.
It was awesome pizza, the best I think I've had yet in Rome! I'm guessing it was because it was associated out of Naples, which is the best pizza I have had in Italy by far with Becky! This pizza was a close second! We got some sort of spicy pizza with bacon and it just melted in your mouth! After dinner mom and Ger walked me home and we said goodnight :) It was by far a very eventful day!
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