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Due to the unreliability (i.e., leaving once every 3 hours or so…maybe) of Italian trains we weren't able to get out of Siena to Castellina in Chianti for the Saturday markets! Instead we went for a long walk over to the train station to pick up our train tickets to Rome for tomorrow. Walking anywhere around here involves a fair bit of meandering & frequent oohing & aahing as we discover shops we can't possibly go past without looking inside…so even a short trip to the train station can stretch out to a few hours! We had a light lunch in the sun & had to stop back past the hostel because the soul of Esther's shoe finally completely died :(
Then it was on to our wine tasting class at the Tuscan Wine School. It was so good, definitely one of the best things I've done on my trip so far & well worth the time & money. We did a 2 hour gastronomy class, during which we sampled 4 different local wines (a sparkling, two reds, & a sweet desert wine), along with a plate of local Tuscan food (cured meats, pecorino & gorgonzola cheese, olive oil etc.) with some traditional biscuits & special chocolates. The lady teaching the class was Danish but had been living in Italy for about 16 years and had done her sommeliers course, so she knew a whole lot about wine! But she explained everything in a really simple & entertaining way - no wine snobbery here - so that I could actually get my head around how it all worked. Plus having the wines there to taste & compare as she was explaining the smells & tastes, how they come to be like that etc. made it much easier to pick up on the subtle things I might normally miss when drinking wine.
The food was delicious & she carefully explained to us where all the meats came from, how they were cured etc. & how the cheeses were made. She stressed that all the animals were "happy animals" i.e., they died out munching grass in a field somewhere & were dead with no time to be scared! Not only does this make for very happy piggies, boars etc., it also makes them much more tender & tasty! :) Oh & we also learned that Ricotta is not actually cheese - it's the stuff that comes out of the production of making cheese. Also that true balsamic vinegar takes about 12 years to make & was originally a mistake, discovered through wine making gone bad. Once upon a time people used to drink shots of it after dinner to aid their digestion…hmm…Anyway, the course was amazing - delicious, informative, fun - everything you could want in a wine tasting! :)
In the afternoon we went back to the hostel to pack for out trip to Rome early tomorrow morning & for a little bit of a siesta (you can still have those in Italy…right? Hehe). Then on our last night in Tuscany we went to dinner at a restaurant that our tour guide, Paolo, had recommended the day before. It's called Duo Porte (which means 2 doors in Italian) & it had some of the most attentive restaurant staff I've come across in a long time…now that may or may not have been the fact that we were 2 young Australian girls, but they sure did seem to check in on our tables VERY frequently…Actually the two waiters weren't even Italian, one of them was from Romania & is here studying, and the other was from…somewhere else! Haha Anyway, we were treated to many a free glass of limoncello & champagne throughout the night as they tried to convince us to come out with them after their shift finished. Now, that wouldn't be until midnight at least & we're both like, sorry boys, we have an early train to catch! Even after the extremely delicious, coffee-containing tiramisu we knew there was no way the champagne buzz was going to last another 4 hours…However, we did get a rather optimistic text from them at 2:30 in the morning asking us to come & join them for drink, but being deep in sleep & very comfy in our PJs we left them hanging…more European hearts broken! :P
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