Ending our time in Tuscany

We began the second half of our time in Tuscany with a trip to the BEAUTIFUL Cinque Terre to celebrate Marla’s 21^st Birthday and our one month mile stone of traveling! We spent the weekend hiking between the 5 picturesque villages, taking tons of touristy photos, and soaking up a little sun seaside with an amazing view.

              Hiking between 5 towns that cling to cliffs turned out to be one of nature’s finest stair masters. We definitely earned our bottle of wine and cone of fritto misto by the end of it! Even during the hardest parts the beautiful views made the hike totally worth the work out! Every 200 feet there was a look out that had views even better than the last.

              Finally being able to see the view that had been my screen saver for months was a pretty surreal experience, and being able to share it with my best friend over a glass of wine… what could be better? After 2 full days of catching trains, hiking, and cliff jumping we were exhausted but excited to head back to Tuscany to finish out Grape harvest 2k15!

Cosimo Maria Masini turned out to be one of the most amazing and rewarding experiences either one of us have ever had. The work was very labor intensive but the scenery and amazing people made all of the heavy lifting a little bit easier!

We felt so fortunate to be able to share our very first harvest with our 6 other roommates from all over the world. We all had so many stories to share and something new to bring to the table. We spent many nights drinking wine on the porch watching the sunset on our beautiful vines. Our time on the vineyard would not have been the same without our new friends!

Marla and I fell in love with the process of wine making (and drinking) while in Tuscany. Yvonne the wine maker took us under her wing and showed us the entire process. The way she taught us to interact with the wines encompassed all five senses. Touching, tasting, and listening to the wines to understand what is going on during this intensive process became a daily lesson. We were able to taste Sangiovese (the largest percentage of grapes grown on the vineyard) on the wine, throughout fermentation, during crushing, and once it was taken off of the yeast. During every step of the process Yvonne and Marina took the time to explain what characteristics they were looking for in the wine.

While helping to take the wine off of the yeast Marla had the BRILLIANT idea to try to and harvest the wine yeast to make bread. With a little help from our baker friends back home and a little experimentation we were able to bake bread using the yeast from the grapes that we had harvested ourselves!! The best part—it even tasted good! (new business idea for the future, maybe?)

 From Italian lessons in the vines to wine tasting in Chianti, we made the most of our time in Tuscany! We got even more out of WWOOFing than we ever thought we would. We are missing it already and have already made plans to meet up with friends that we made during our stay at Cosimo Maria Masini. Our last night was filled with great wine, great food, and amazing company and was the perfect way to end such a memorable chapter in our lives. 

 Ciao for now Tuscany, Bella and Bionda Bella will be back soon! 

Wwoofing round 1: Part 1

It is safe to say that neither one of us has the best of luck when it comes to public transportation. We try to find the cheapest and quickest ways to get to places which with the help from Go Euro has not been that difficult. With the exception of our trip to our first wwoofing location in San Miniato. Our train tickets had been purchased and we where ready for our 6 hour excursion with three train transfers, sounds easy right! Well that trip turned into a 12 hour day five train transfers, one bus, and a taxi. Patience is definitely a trait that we have developed over this month. The best part of this 12 hour day had to be arriving in San Miniato, not because we had finally made it but because we had NO IDEA how to get to the vineyard. This is when we met Martina who was a saint. We got on the bus and quickly realized we didnt know where the vineyard was and that nobody spoke english. Luckily Martina a local from San Miniato and manager of the local truffle shop did speak english and helped us find our way to the vineyard. Arriving at Cosimo Maria Masini was the best feeling in the world. That night we met three of the five people that made our experience wwoofing unforgettable.1. Marina the sweetest and spicest latin loving Italian one could ever come to find 2. Igor a napolian turnt australian turnt organic obsessed man 3. Fabio who was "always mad because he is sicilian".

The next morning was our first day of harvesting we where ready to rumble so excited but without the slightest idea of what we had gotten ourselves into. This is also when we met Jean Paolo the cutest little old man that every girl dreams of meeting. He would feed us chocolate through the vines, I mean how could you not love that man. It was even more of an adventure since he spoke no English and we obviously speak zero Italian so we mainly communicated through hand gestures.Grape picking in theory is not hard but when you are bent over for five hours a day carrying 20 kilos of grapes you begin to feel the pain as well as see it on your legs(bruises). After a few days of harvesting Abby and I made our way down to the cellar where we met Yvonne the 5th person that had a huge impact on our trip. She was a Swiss wine maker who has had the most interesting life and gave us a once in a life time experience! With her we got to press down the grapes bathe the grapes and so much more.Our afternoons revolved around the cellar; there was nothing like seeing the transformation of delicious grape juice to fermenting wine.

The following week was my(Marla) 21st birthday which of course in Europe does not mean much. But when you have a best friend like Abby, who goes all out to make it a special event how could I complain. She went crazy with the little details like getting me almonds which are my favorite!! Making pancakes in the morning, mimosas at lunch and SPECTACULAR DINNER!! and the worst but most beautiful carrot cake that could have come out of our barely functional oven. The dinner was amazing having duck pate, grilled octopus in a yogurt sauce, the crispest pork belly in a ginger sauce and lamb chops in a pea and mint sauce. It is safe to say that our first two weeks have been an absolute success! We are off to Cinque Terre and excited for the second half of our time on this magical hill top in San Miniato, Italy.

Nice

NICE is a very nice place in France (get it?), we took an alternate way of getting here called Bla Bla car which we highly recommend. Bla Bla car is a ridesharing car service which connects drivers and travelers to share a car ride and split the fee of travel. For those traveling on a budget its a great way to meet people and get cheap transportation. The Hostel we stayed at was in a great location literally in front of the train station so it was perfect for when we went to Monaco and Villefranche-sur-mer. One of our favorite things to do in Nice was go to the farmers market and see the local produce and what they had to offer. The spices and fresh produce where just to die for.

For our first meal in Nice we had a Socca and mussels with a saffron sauce. The restaurant was called Lou pilha Leva in the middle of the old town great location and opportunity to people watch. Soccas are a really interesting flat bread made out of chickpea flour and cooked on a large flat pan that looks like it moonlights as a paella pan. They have a really nice crispy texture with a fluffy interior, perfect for soaking up the delicious sauce left after a huge bowl of mussels.

While in Nice we really missed cooking so we decided to take a break from eating out for dinner and instead cook at the Hostel and that is where they introduced us to the aperitif and the traditional 4 hour long dinner. Some of the Apertif foods that we had where quiches, pate en croute, cheese, duck stomach (DELICIOUS!), olives just so you can get a idea of our pre-dinner. 

A great town two train stops away from Nice is Villefranche-sur-mer, it is one of the only non rock beaches in the south of france. They are small pebbles which we think is better than sand and rocks, because it is soft enough to lay on and does not get everywhere. It is a tiny town but perfect for a relaxing beach day. But we were in the south of France so its kind of impossible to have a bad day... 

On our last few days we tried some other great french food one of the interesting things was a aged goat cheese from the farmers market which went perfectly with the violet jelly we picked up from a local confection shop. The violet jelly has been making appearances in almost every city we have stopped in because we absolutely fell in love with its unique flavor.

This is just a short list of some must tries while in nice just get the full effect of Nice's cuisine.

NICE FOOD LIST

• Nicoise Salad or in a Sandwich 
• Violet jelly, liquor, or gelato
• Pissaladiere
• Rose wine
• Socca
• Mussels and fries 
• Olives and the different types 
• Fruit confit (a candy that takes 45 days to make but turns out looking like beautiful glass gems)

TOWNS AROUND NICE

• Cannes
• Ville de Franche
• Monaco 
• Antibes 

HOSTEL

• Antares Hostel Nice