We stopped at a little town called San Gimignano where we tried some canoli - kind of like brandy snaps - with a hardish tubular pastry with cream in the middle. We also bought some timber utensils made out of olive tree wood from a small shop that sold heaps of wooden products. We wanted to buy everything in the store but for obvious reasons we couldn't!
From SG we headed to a winery for a wine tasting lunch. We learnt the Italian technique of tasting which generally goes as follows:
(For the right handed person, for left handers, do the opposite)
Pick up glass by stem with the left hand, transfer glass to right hand holding the base.
Give the wine a good swirl with the hand covering the top of the glass
Then stick your nose into the glass and take a deep breath.
Finally take a large mouthful and swirl and suck this in your mouth for 10 seconds before swallowing. The swirling process is actually more a case of sucking and blowing motion but this really needs to be demonstrated for its true meaning. Seeing the group of 32 try this at the same time was very amusing.
9 different wines later most of the group were a little happy. They also served a delicious lasagne.
When we finally arrived in Rome, it was time to say goodbye to some of our group (14 people finished their tour here). Later that evening we met the new people joining the tour at this point.
Dinner was fresh pasta which Grace found to be a bit over powering with a lot of olive oil and pesto - a bit too overdressed. Andrew thought it was good :-)
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