Day 25 (4/15/11)

After our normal pre-adventure routine, we were on the road again! Today we are headed for Volterra and San Gimignano, two smaller towns that, believe or not, are on top of hills in the middle of the Tuscan landscape! Sadly, we found out today that Italy does in fact have bad weather, as it was rainy and cloudy again. This was unfortunate in more than just personal comfort terms, because the whole reason we came to Volterra was for the fantastic views out to the sea as well as the great landscape that surrounded it.
But, as we are architects and prepared for disappointment, we made the most of the situation and persevered. We stopped in a few churches that were nice, one that was very fake; the columns were made of concrete with some kind of marble cover on them, and the striping of the “brick” walls like the Duomo of Siena were just colored on. After we split up a few of us decided to head to the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre that was out along the city walls. It was pretty neat, and even through the fog we were able to see the pretty great remains (sadly the pictures don’t do it much justice). From there we wandered around aimlessly for a while, saw a pretty nice fountain, some great stairs, and wandered through an extremely peaceful park. Upon our return to the drop-off point the sun finally began to poke through, so we were able to see a little bit of the view as well as some of the towers in the city that had been hidden before.
Once we all got back to the bus we set off for San Gimignano, another hill town who’s claim to fame is the many towers that are scattered throughout. The weather here was a little better and the views of the different towers (just big rectangles, nothing ornate) were nice. We wandered and talked as a group for a little while before a bunch of us went to the remains of a Medici fort. The best parts of this trip were the trees in the courtyard that smelled unbelievable (everything here seems to smell cleaner and better in general) as well as the view out from the viewing platform that we could climb up.
After some more wandering around we came back to the main piazza of the city where we found a gelato place that apparently had won the “world championship” of gelato twice, most recently in 2009. So not really needing a reason to but enjoying the glory, we got some. I had praline, frutti di bosco (mountain fruit) yogurt, and a mystery flavor that had a dark caramely taste with little crunchy things in it. The gelato lived up to the hype, and we were all very content. Someone got a white wine flavored scoop, and apparently it tasted exactly like it, alcoholy aftertaste and everything. After enjoying our remaining time here we all wandered back to the bus for the ride (nap) home.
Once home we took some time to relax before meeting as a group to discuss details of our stay in Roma! After a long talk a big group of us decided to go out to a Mexican (please don’t judge me…again) place we saw a couple of days ago. This ended up being a fantastic idea!!! The place was great (about as Tex-Mex as you can get…Italia-Mex?) and had a giant basement filled with seats, which was a relief because there weren’t enough in the restaurant itself. We all ordered off the “Gringo Menu” and got a pretty great combo of one entrée, a nacho dish, and a drink for less than 10 euro. I had a Mexican rice and chorizo burrito with guacamole nachos and water. We had a blast, and they even took our picture and put it in a cheesy frame for us. On the way home we stopped for some gelato to cap off the fantastic night and went to bed!