Ciao Palazzo Chigi!

Yesterday right when I woke up, I went downstairs to the restaurant in the hotel for a cappiccino. It tasted like silk. We went to Palazo Chigi (the Chigi Palace) where we will be
every day.
On our walk to the palace, we just leave our hotel and its a 10 minute
walk there. We walk over this beautiful bridge and underneath are
villas and little streets, in the distance are vineyards and beyond
that you can see the Mediterranean.


This is a view from the bridge at night.
We had an amazing meal at a local restaurant yesterday for lunch. They just kept bringing
out food. The town is like Fairhope sort of- everyone knows we are
here and they want to impress us so we will come to their restaurants
alot, so they basically bring us everything in the restaurant.
The town next to us is called Albano, and it is alot bigger than
Ariccia. We walked there last night and I went to the sepermercato to
get shampoo and razor blades. EVeryone was shocked at how little I
packed. Most girls checked atleast 2 bags and had a huge carry on and
they had to pay extra because all of their bags weighed over 50 lbs. I
only checked one back and it weighed 44 lbs! Aren't you proud!? I
haven't needed anything except shampoo and conditioner. Oh, and I
realized that I did forget my bathingsuit for when we go to the
beach... but thats fine...
We went to a little Pruschetta stand down the street for some wine later, then came back to the hotel. I slept SO well.
This morning it was very cool out and we got a complete tour of the palace.
I took some pictures but they do not do anything there any justice. This is a fireplace in the palace.

We had an italian lesson from Mary Lou and a history lesson from Marco (picture above from dinner on the first night.. arent't they cute?!) . Then a late lunch at La Rupa... we were all sooo hungry. Italians eat lunch at like 3!
Later we took the bus to Genzano, the town on the other side of Ariccia from Albano.
In Genzano each year, there is a flower festival where they cover the entire streets with flowers... This is a picture of a street in Genzano. There are lots of little shops there, but the streets were very crowded, so we decided to take the bus back to Albano where Ali, Lauren and I had dinner at a little pizzaria. It was definitely family owned and he brought us every kind of pizza he had and brought us wine and charged us five euro each.. They were so sweet. His wife was so patient with my extremely extremely broken Italian.
Tomorrow we will Visit the towns of CastelGandolfo, Frascati, Genzano, Tuscolo and Montecavo. In the afternoon there is a possible visit to a grape harvest.
I cannot get over how wonderful the weather is. Another thing I'm shocked at is the unbelievable sunsets on the Mediterranean. I thought Mobile Bay had the most beautiful I'd ever seen, but the sunsets here are competition for the eastern shore. But I wouldn't trade a day on the bay for anything in the world.