Back Home in Lyon

Day Thirty-Seven

Amelia and I made it back to Lyon!  What a worthy accomplishment :)  Back at the house, I was a chatterbox all throughout dinner and it was AWESOME!  My host mom absolutely loves Italy and so I was recounting to her and my host dad the things I saw and what I found interesting.  They even had visited the same medieval city I visited in Tuscany!  I kept forgetting the passé composé conjugations of verbs but they would help in making corrections and I was able to have the longest conversation yet with them tonight.  How awesome!  After a week of only hearing French from other tourists visiting Italy, that's pretty great I'd like to think.  It's also nice to think that I can be funny in French--and not just from my pronunciation but from the actual content of what I'm saying.  There's hope! 

Now, my day in the Tuscan region.  We visited San Gimignano and Monterrigioni.  The first is a medieval town that originally was comrpised of 75 towers (14 remain) and is still intact only because the Medici family back in the day didn't find it worth transforming into the Renaissance styled architecture/urban set-up because it wasn't that impressive of a small town.  But good for us--because it's amazing!  Only the rich could afford to have these towers built for themselves and on the ground floor would be their shop, rooms would be above, and the kitchen would be at the top floor (to avoid a possible fire trapping them from below).  Because this town was in the middle of Rome and Florence, there were a lot of battles going on.  So, the rich could afford some personal protective measure within the town's defensive walls.  Very interesting.  The second place we visited was an incredibly small village that was enclosed within medieval defensive walls as well and just like the other town, was atop of a hill with a great view of the Tuscan country--if only it was warm enough for the vineyards to be in season!!  Regardless, it was breathtaking.  I'm getting tired for bed so I won't go into any more details--just check out my facebook pictures.