So for the past few watercolor classes with Gabrielle, he has taken us outside to paint. Garbielle's house is next to a little stream where he says he fishes and it has a perfect view of the castle in the distance. Not sure where the fish are that he's catching, because we didn't see any when we looked into the stream. At some point while we were trying put brush to paper and fighting the wind from taking our paper away, Gab told us that he has another house only 7 minutes away (on foot) given to him by the government, but he'd never move there because he loves that stream more than his family. After we painted for awhile, we had our usual tea and pie while talking to Gabrielle about anything and everything. We asked him what he thought about the current train strike, and he told us (while acting things out) that he wanted to kick all the workers in the butt and hire people who would work. The train strikes here are relatively frequent and also really dumb. They basically announce that they won't run trains for about 6 hours one day, but they still come to work to tell people that there is a strike and the trains that take kids to school still have to run. Sorry Joe, you don't get a random day off. You have to take kids to school! Dumb.
Anyway, after talking to Gabrielle for awhile he took us out to his garden behind his house. He has a decent amount of stuff planted, and he said that it produces way more than he can use so he gives most of it away. He picked about a million radishes for all of us to take home and eat. They're actually pretty good with bread, olive oil and salt.
The past two times we went to Gabrielle, he told us at the end that he could take a few people in his car to ride around the area. I didn't go one of the prior times (he has room for 4 people max and there are 7 of us) so I jumped at the chance to go this time. We hopped in the car and he started driving us away from Castiglion and towards the hills. We climbed up the ridges for quite some time, getting glimpses here and there as the town got smaller. Once we were towards the top of the ridge, Gabrielle stopped along a little settlement that was having some restoration work done. It looked really old and worn day...like it should possibly be condemned but people were living there and trying to fix it up. As Andres, Ryan, Stephanie and I were walking around, we came to a spot where the trees were cleared and we could see out. I can't even describe how beautiful the scenery was. The castle that usually looks so high up was way down in the valley, and we could see all the way to a lake near Moltepulciano, which is a good 45 minutes away. Absolutely breathtaking. The four of us stood in silence for awhile until Ryan really summed up the moment with "And none of us has a camera". Ultimate bummer. The thing is though, breathtaking landscapes never really turn out well in photos, at least not with my camera, so perhaps its just as well.
The next class, which was our final class, I was ready with a camera just in case. Our projects were due later that week and most of Wednesday and Thursday were full of trips, so a few of us brought portions of our projects to water color. After pie, tea, and more radishes, Gabrielle took a few more of us on a driving trip. This time we went to a small little house up on one of the ridges where a friend of his lives. This was another house that looked like someone probably shouldn't be living in, the windows were broken and the place was in some disrepair. While we were walking around, Gabrielle took a little grass plant, made a lasso out of it, and lassoed my classmate Beth's finger with it. He then told her this was how he caught lizards and she was his lizard for the day, so she had to walk around on her leash. Once Beth's finger was released, we got back in the car and Gab drove us in between the ridges towards Cortona. It started getting pretty close to dinner, so Gab turned the car around and started gunning it down the windy, hilly, roads back to town. Now I never get car sickness, but oh my goodness. The Mamba rollarcoaster has nothing on Italian driving. How these people don't get into more accidents/ fly off of ridges I'm not sure. We were pretty excited to be on stable ground once Gabrielle let us off by the study center where we hurried back to catch dinner.
Things I've Learned:
Poppys are all over the Tuscan landscape right now, and they are amazing! I might be developing a new favorite flower. Sadly, no sunflowers while we're here.
Almost everyone that lives in the valley down from the Castiglion hill has their own personal garden and many people here make their own wine and olive oil.
It's apparently normal to drink wine at breakfast/lunch, according to Gabrielle. Now I know why siesta is after lunch. Wine coma!
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