olive harvest and orvieto!

I'm late with my blogging...typical, but nevertheless, I must document everything I've done!
So last friday was the olive harvest! The NYU campus here in Florence, Villa La Pietra, has a ton of olive trees all in the middle 'Death Valley' area. November is the beginning of the olive harvest so for two euros each we were able to spend the day harvesting, with lunch and a oil tasting included in the price! Not too bad. Pretty cheap labor though. The actual harvesting was a lot of fun! It's easier than I expected, but after about 3 hours of picking olives off a tree, I was a bit bored. Basically all that was needed to harvest is a basket and the ability to pull a bunch of olives easily off the branches. We were expert harvesters, plowing down atleast a dozen trees in our alloted time. Finally at 1 they yelled to us: Pronto! (apparently the italian way to let us know that lunch is 'ready'. So we ran up the hill to the giant stone picnic table outside the art studio where lunch was being cooked on a coal fire. Very rustic. Lunch was ribollita (a Tuscan soup of bread and vegetables...delicious) accompanied by real garlic toast and sausages. All very delicious.
Following lunch was our oil tasting. I wasn't really sure what to expect with the tasting, but regardless I was suprised with how it went. I've done my fair share of wine tasting but olive oil tasting is a whole different experience. You're basically taking a shot of oil. Which, yes, was pretty disgusting. We only had to do three (olive oil, virgin olive oil and extravirigin olive oil) but it was still a tad nasty. The guy in charge, Nick, explained to us the olive oil process, the differences between the types and what flavors to expect. My favorite is the extravirgin oil, mildly piccante (spicy).
After lunch we were suppose to do two more hours of harvesting but my friends and I decided to bounce home since we were harvested out. Clearly we're not built to be Tuscan farmers....
The next day me and two other friends (shelly and michael) went to Orvieto! Orvieto is a little town in the south of Umbria, so it was about a two hour train ride from Florence. We left at about 9 20 and got there at about 11 30. After taking the cable-car-like-ride up to the town from the train station, we wandered around a bit and then stopped for lunch. The town is very old with a deep Etruscan history. The Duomo there, basically the main attraction, was incredible. The gothic facade contained beautiful mosaics and sculptural work. I actually had studied this church in AP Art History, I think, but I literally didn't remember anything about it. Pretty sad. Regardless, it was beautiful. I posted some photos of my trip, which obviously has pictures of the Duomo.
After the church we wandered the town and stumbled across a little museum with underground Etruscan dwellings. VERY cool. Small and short, but so cool to see the cellars and wells the Etruscan used 25 centuries ago. After the tombs we decided to head back to Florence and relax for the rest of the weekend. Sunday of course was a day for work.
Unfortunately Orvieto was my last trip outside of Florence for the semester. I decided that I didn't want to spend anymore time or money outside of Florence. For the rest of the semester I want to spend my time exploring parts of Florence I've never been before....