Hiking in Chianti

This past Sunday, myself and a group of girls from the Villa took an organized trip to the Chianti region, to a town called Greve. For 35 euro, we had the whole day organized, bus trip to the town, an organized hike, lunch, lots of wine, and of course, a trip home! It was pretty cold when we were traveling to Chianti! We had to get up at 6 am to have enough time and waited for the bus for what seemed like forever! The bus was cold as well, but thankfully, the sun was out once we got off the bus and started our walk. The walk was advertised as a relaxing stroll, but it was quite a workout to go through the vineyards up and down hills! It was too bad that none of the plants were alive and full of grapes, but the countryside was incredibly beautiful, not justified in pictures!

After about 2 hours of hiking, we went to a little church and chilled outside absorbing the view and waiting for mass to be over so we could go inside. This is a picture of Liz, Jenny, and I in front of the church. You can't tell from the picture, but our uber sketchy guide was next to me promoting his club to other girls and asking us if we couldn't wait to get drunk. He was kind of insulting and I know now that some other girls in the program complained about him to the program.

Anyway, after the church, we were exhausted and ready for some wine tasting! We went to a villa in the hills that produces its own wine, and only got to really try the wine they make there. Thankfully it was wonderful! One type of white, two reds, and a dessert sweet wine. In addition, there were meats and cheeses all over the table, and we were served a funky cold bean soup.. bleh, but two types of pasta which were wonderful and chocolate biscotti. This is a picture from my view of the table looking down! We we're hungry!

Lunch was one of the longest ever... 3 hours! It became obvious that they didn't have enough for us to do, so we just sat and got tired after all that wine! But at 3:30 we got up and went to "tour" the vineyard where the wine we drank is from. It was a long walk and there wasn't much to see. It would have been nice if they described the process to us, but no... it was kind of lame for how much we paid, but the scenery was gorgeous and we had a lot of fun with each other! This was a finale to a wonderful weekend and now back to class for a few days before my next adventure!
Ciao!