On Saturday, October 3, my friends and I went on a bike tour of Tuscany. After doing the bike tour in Germany, we couldn't wait to do another. The group met and took a 40 minute, VERY bumpy ride 40 minutes away to a town called Poppiano. I didn't think I would make it to the bike tour because I was SO car sick but I eventually got over it. Before we hopped on our bikes, we got a tour of the Castello di Poppiano, where the Count and Countess still currently live and produce world famous wine and oil. We walked through the castle and were told how they made the products, and even got to try the oil and wine. It was incredible. When we got to the top of the castle we had amazing views of the rolling hills. Finally, we hopped on our bikes, (which were named after famous actors or characters, mine was Brad Pitt), and began our 14-mile journey through Tuscany. The bikes were very different from the ones we had in Germany because they were mountain bikes. We had to constantly change gears, and were even required to wear helmets. Some parts of the journey were harder than others and I had to constantly remind myself to look up at the scenery because I was concentrating so hard on biking. It was awesome to ride around and see miles of vineyards. It was truly breathtaking. We stopped for lunch at this small family restaurant and then continued on our journey. At the end of the journey, there was a huge hill. The guides advised us that it would be really difficult to get up, and we could opt out and take a van to the top. Emily and I braved the hill and made it to the top! It was extremely hard but at the end I was excited that I finished it, and felt really accomplished. We had great weather and I couldn't have asked for a better day.
After the bike tour, I came home and got ready to meet my parents at the hotel! I was super excited to see them, and I couldn't wait for them to get to Florence. I met them at the hotel, and we went to dinner at I Tarocchi, the same pizzeria that we went to on my first night in Florence. It was great to catch up with them over dinner, and they were exhausted after their long day of traveling so they went to bed and I met them for breakfast the next day at the hotel.
After breakfast with Chelsea, Emily, and my parents, we decided to take a trip to Pisa for the day to see the leaning tower. We took a train and when we got there, we realized that Pisa is not a nice city at all. Instead of walking to the tower from the train station, we took a cab and had him wait there for about 10 minutes while we took the cliche pictures in front of the tower.
We then hopped back in the cab and took the ten minute drive to Lucca, which is a walled-in medieval city. It was worth the trip, because the city was like nothing I had ever seen before. The streets were even more narrow than the streets in Florence, and there were hardly any cars driving around. It was just a very quaint city and it was fun to walk around and explore without a plan. We sat outside for lunch in Piazza Dell'Anfiteatro and had some great paninis. It started to rain, so we sat and talked for awhile and waited for it to pass. Unfortunately, the rain continued and we walked around in the rain very unprepared. We then decided we had seen enough and took the next train back to Florence. That night, we met the guys at Gatto to watch football (of course my dad was ecstatic that this was an option). It was a great weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment