San Gimignano

If you’ve ever seen a movie with Tuscany as the location, you are probably familiar with this story line.

The scene: an unhappy woman, usually from a divorce or some other mid-life crisis, makes a spontaneous decision to travel to Italy and chooses Tuscany as her destination. She is scared and her Italian is bad (or non-existent), yet her charm manages to get her around town without too many problems. Eventually, she finds some swarthy Italian man who probably helps her out with some mild crisis she’s having (she can’t speak to the shop owner, her apartment needs fixing, etc.) and she ends up falling in love for a little bit, even though he’s probably a little too young for her. The problems from her previous life have disappeared, and she claims she’ll never go back to America or an American way of life.

Hollywood has gotten predictable.

Anyways, my point is, I have absolutely nothing in common with these movies, save for one thing - I am a woman in my 30s who just got divorced.

I’m kidding.

What I really have in common with these movies is that I too am surrounded by the beautiful Tuscan countryside. I see it during the day when I look out my window, when I’m sipping coffee on the terrace, when I’m going (not often enough) for my tri-weekly run, and this past Wednesday, when I traveled to San Gimignano.

San Gimignano is a small town about an hour bus ride away from Siena situated on the top of a hill with 360 degree views of the surrounding Tuscan countryside. The view did not fail to disappoint. Unfortunately, I forget to bring my good camera on this mini-trip, so all my pictures had to be taken with my iPhone camera.

The view from San Gimignano

Me with the view

A group of my friends had the day off from classes (the schedule worked out in our favor), so we decided we would spend the afternoon exploring one of the many towns that are in the vicinity of Siena. After consulting our program site director, we decided that San Gimignano was the place to go. We successfully used public transportation to get there, and the hour long bus ride provided several views of other little towns in the area along with stunning vistas of the rolling hills Tuscany is known for.

Naturally, within our first hour there we made a pit stop for some gelato. I could go on and on about gelato, but I won’t. My one piece of advice: if you think you’ve have “good” gelato in America, you probably haven’t. Go to Italy, if only for gelato. It might (definitely) be worth it.

My go to flavors: coconut and cioccolato fondente (dark chocolate)

We then took our gelato and bottles of wine and sat down on a grassy patch at the top of the hill that the town is on and sat and chatted for a while. The wine, as usual, was delicious, and I believe at one point I told my friends “I want to have a love affair with this gelato.” Yes, it was that good.

After some more wandering, more enjoying-the-views, we came to the main street of San Gimignano. We were headed towards the bus station, but we twenty or so minutes to kill before we had to catch our bus. We popped into a couple of shops to peek around, and in one winery shop I found these drinks.

Bottles of crema al Meloncello and crema al Limone - basically a creamy, fruity liquor that is delicious

I couldn’t resist the cool bottles, and crema al Meloncello and crema al Limone sounded too good to pass up. We drank the Limone the other night, and while it was strong, it was delicious. Don’t worry parents, we split it between like eight of us. I ended up putting mine in the freezer until it got slushy, and then ate it with a spoon, which made it even more delicious - something I didn’t think was possible.

All in all, my time in Siena has been going great. My Italian gets better every single day - the Italian students who live on my floor have been indispensable in helping me learn conversational Italian - and I’ve met enough people now that I’m likely to see a friend or two while I’m walking to class during the day. Every day, Siena feels a little more homey to me.