Caught up!

So I'm finally caught up LOL. Today is Wednesday and we went to the wool museum this morning. Casentino has a special history with wool and the wool they are famous for today. We saw how weaving has evolved and how it's done today and then there was an optional weaving class, which I stayed for. I made a little pot holder square thing... lol. Then we had a sack lunch, and it was actually GOOD today! I know I was surprised too. (I think we're having them again tomorrow, so I'm kinda looking forward to it lol).

Brain skip - I just realized I forgot to tell you about the pizza marathon of last night! Best pizza yet, but that's because the main chef is from Napoli where pizza came from originally. We all went to this pizzeria in town and took up the entire restaurant...whoops! Robbie ordered ham, cheese, pepperoni, 4 cheese, and sausage. We all got one slice (supposedly 1/8th of the entire pizza, but think sbarro slice size) of each flavor. Example: first out was the ham so they kept bringing plate after plate of ham pizzas out for each of the 40ish of us to have a slice. Some of us halved slices just bc there was so much food. By the end, he ended up canceling the sausage bc we wouldn't have been able to eat it. The quattro formaggie was my fave - soooo good. It had mozzerella and sheep cheese and 2 other cheeses that I couldn't identify. I had an entire slice of that to myself :D PS - we also saw the mill and had a fab dinner there and got in the Arno River while it was still clean!

Back to today: sack lunches, short nap, then get on a train to go to Poppi to see the next castle! This one was sooo epic, very much what you'd think a castle would be like. I got some souveneirs here :) Also we had a sword fight. There was a little chapel room and some of the original fresco work on the walls were still here. Also there was a library that's usually closed. 2 of the 5 rooms were open. They held books as far back as 1330, but I couldn't get pictures bc of the damage :( The lady I talked to said the other rooms held books as far back as the 900s! As you can imagine it smelled sooo good in that room. Also in this Guidy castle they had a replica and stuff about the epic battle between the papal state and the other side (lol sorry). It was about who could appoint bishops etc. And it was pretty bloody and people got exiled and people were traitors and all kinds of cool stuff. I have some pics from this room that are pretty legit ;) Then I climbed the tower to see the bell at the top, but mostly for the view of the surrounding towns, etc. It was rainy today and yesterday so it had some pretty cool views of the clouds hovering low over mountains, etc. And naturally the bell rang as I was standing next to it and it nearly caused me to fall down the forever long stairs, but luckily I didn't fall 0:). Also it was kinda a bummer bc it didn't ring like bells used to by swingin side to side. It was held stationary and hit by a hammer-thing, but it's super old, so that's ok I guess.

Then we shuttled back to the Castle from yesterday - and we got to see the rest of it and how they irrigated it by rainwater on the roof and all sorts of cool stuff. Also we got to have supper here and it was so delicious. We had all kinds of medieval recipes and I actually liked it...I know shocker! Also we had a little devo upstairs before we left and sang happy bday to Kaden (the Burks' youngest) bc he turned 11 today. He was sooo excited :) Marta sells cookbooks of all kinds of super easy, but delicious Tuscan/medieval dishes, some of which we ate tonight and she signed them for us and wrote little notes in them. She's just so precious, I really do hope that her tests come back better than expected. Then we came back to the hotel.

Whoops I also forgot that the prison tower of that Romanesque castle is probably what inspired Dante's levels of hell which got worse as you got further down (as did the torture/punishment in this prison). Cool/creepy huh?

Tomorrow we visit a Fransican monastery and then, weather permitting hike in the woods a bit, and then travel back to the villa.