frascati scottie!

today was really fun! minus waking up with a horrible sore throat. but thankfully as the day went on it got a little better. katie gave me some medicine out of her 3 jumbo ziploc bags. hopefully that will help.

we got on the bus at 930am and headed for frascati, the town that i was the expert on today! once we got there, i got to give my little speech on frascati over the microphone on the bus. because i had terrible printing issues here, i had to recite it from memory. but it still went really well.

one of the many villas in frascati. frascati is known for their incredible villas, built by papal nobility around the 16th century. there are many of them. some were destroyed in world war II though, and you can only visit their gardens

then we were allowed to wander around frascati for an hour. immediately we ran in to this older italian man who was lusting after our group of american girls. first he kissed me on both cheeks, then he went to kiss krystle on both cheeks, but purposely missed and kissed her on the lips. after that warm greeting, he followed us in to a bakery where he tried to convince us in broken english that he was as beautiful as george clooney or brad pitt. he got down on one knee and broke in to song for cydney for about 5 minutes. the entire bakery was starring at us, and cinzia's face what priceless. she couldn't understand what he was even talking about in italian. it was definitely interesting.

crazy man singing to cydney. that's cinzia in the background in the black. her face is like "what is going on"

from there we went down a small side street where we found some shops, and i found some hunter boots on sale! it was extremely exciting because i have been coveting hunter boots for months. BUT the most exciting part about it is that the pair on sale that i got were a special design. they look like riding boots, not the rain boots, and they have padding on the inside. i have never seen them before, and when we looked them up i think you can really only find them in europe right now? so i love them. they're navy blue. and im so happy, great investment.

my new hunter rainboots. notice how they're fitting to the leg, they come up on the sides, and they're padded on the inside.

after courtney and i spoiled ourselves with new hunter boots, we headed over to a couple of the churches in frascati. we checked out the church of santa maria in vivario which was really beautiful. i really liked the interior of this church. it also has a cool story. back in 1656 some plaster peeled back off of one of the walls of the interior of this church and they discovered a fresco painting of saints sebastian and roch (who is the protector of the plague). soon after this happened, a plague broke out in rome and frascati was the only city not affected by it. from then on they were their patron saints, and statues of saint sebastian and roch were put on the front facade of the church. neat, huh?

really pretty angel detail in the santa maria in vivario church in frascati

Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter Apostle in frascati

this is the main church in frascati

frascati is known for it's white wine. funny fact - the night before i left america i had dinner at an italian restaurant with jordon and we ordered a bottle of frascati wine! i said we had to because it was from the lazio region of italy, which is where i am, and turns out that i have frascati as my expert of the week topic on day one!

also, frascati has a pastry, or cookie, that is of a three-breasted woman. it's very famous here because they say that the people of the town grow up drinking wine from when they're little, so the middle breast is for wine, while the outer two are for milk? definitely weird, but apparently it's normal here?

the three breasted woman cookie

this really pretty fountain in front of the monk's church

after frascati, we went to castel gandolfo, which is where the pope summers! its so, so beautiful on lake albano. in october there is a festival here when they change all of the water out of the fountains and instead push wine through. so you can fill up your wine glasses in the fountains of the square during the entire festival. last year they accidentally mixed up the pipes and were sending wine through home pipes and wine was coming out of peoples' sink faucets! i got my first italian gelato since ive been here which was delicious, but cold. and we also looked inside of the church right across from the papal palace. then heather mailed a postcard to her parents from the first mailbox in the world. yep, the first ever mailbox.

the papal palace

you know the pope is there when there are swiss guards outside and the vatican flag is hanging above the door.

the church in castel gandolfo

this is above the altar in the church

i thought it was a really cool detail

i love the angels

the fountain in castel gandolfo

our whole group in front of lake albano

gelato!

chocolate and strawberry

10 million x better than ice cream. duh.

heather mailing a postcard to her familia from the first mailbox ever

once we saw castel gandolfo, we went to nemi which is another cool town. they're known for their strawberries. i started to feel kind of sad because i did all of this research on my town and i read how in world war II 50% of frascati was destroyed, and in castel gandolfo you can see chunks of the walls gone because of the war, and then we heard about how the germans set on fire an entire museum of famous ships from hundreds of years ago in nemi. i guess growing up in america you don't see any sort of fallout from wars. of course we hear about pearl harbor and there are monuments and cemeteries, but you dont see physical evidence of war. you actually see it here and everywhere we went today we heard, "well this isn't the original because it was destroyed in the war." it's pretty depressing how these historic things are gone now because of it. but the strawberries are awesome! they're so tiny! i ate some sort of strawberry tart which was amazing. we all need to go back and get some more. then i filled my water bottle up in the fountain!

the chunks taken out of the walls in castel gandolfo

best strawberry tart ever

tiny tiny strawberries!

me filling up my water bottle

then we headed up the mountain to see the the view of the entire castelli romani (the castelli romani is the entire area that includes ariccia, albano, genzano, etc...).

the view from the top of the mountain

we came back to the palace after this and headed to the grocery to get a couple of things. so get this... wine here is like the cheapest thing in the grocery store. not kidding. there was a bottle for 99 cents. santa margharita, which is a wine you can get in publix for like $20, is only 6,49 euro here! amazing. i love italy.

tomorrow we meet the mayor of ariccia and we're going to genzano. ciao!