Friday May 14 - Tiorgiamo

I honestly cannot remember the last time I went on a school field trip. Maybe middle school, eighth grade to some museum that probably didn't fascinate me in the slightest bit. But today was great. Caroline and I made plans to wake up a few minutes early and head to the local fruit shop in town before embarking on our day, so we did that first thing Friday morning. I would love living here if it meant that I could do that every morning. They have some of the best fruit, including pink melon apples, kiwi, plums (pretty much any fruit), plus the best...slightly brown speckled bananas. None of this green, unripe stuff. I've gotta go back on Monday and stock up...yogurt and cereal wasn't doing anymore for breakfast.

But our bus first stopped in Tiorgiamo at a wine museum. But rewind, as we're riding our of Cortona to this little city, we passed a Harley Davidson store. Huge showroom building just chilling on the side of the rode in Italy. But when we got to Tiorgiamo, we had a few minutes to wander around and take in the small city. And all the toilets in Italy I've noticed are different. The ones in the airport don't have toilet seats, and the ones at our restaurant have two side by side buttons you push to flush (ones bigger than the other...you can figure out why), and then our bathroom has a almost the back portion of an American toilet almost upside down with a silver notch you push up to flush. So strange. But I had to laugh when we were in Tiorgiamo because it added a new addition to my list of toilets, with a silver chain pulled to flush from the ceiling. Ha, took me a while to find it...and then can't tell you about Assisi because they wanted .50E for a bathroom use...not happening.

But the wine museum was interesting...in addition to our German tour guide lady. Weird, you'd think they'd hire a native. But the best part of the museum was this section where they had all these different kinds of cups and glasses that were used. Most of them were quite normal, but there was this one almost glass looking pitcher, with a handle that where it attached towards the top of the pitcher, had a tube down into the bottom inside. And then around the rim there was this crown looking design with holes underneath any part of the drinking lip. And I'm sitting there going, there's no successful way anyone can drink out of this jar. Well come to find out, the jar was used back in the day at social parties where there might be parties. And the when the jar was filled with wine, you weren't able to see the tube inside. The trick, known only to the parents, was to suck through a small hole in the handle that would pull wine from the tube on the inside.... A child-proof wine pitcher. How creative.

Caroline and I signed the guest book. If you ever make it, look us up!

Rainiest day ever in Assisi...post to come.