ulous day! To begin with, the weather was perfect; at around 55 degrees and sunny it was probably some of the best weather we've had since arriving in Italy. At San Gimignano we first went on a tour with Bob which highlighted two of the main churches in town: Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta and Chiesa di San Agostino. The entire interior of Santa Maria was covered in frescoes. One wall was devoted to Old Testament stories, the other was devoted to Christ's Passion, and there was another wall depicting Hell and Heaven. St. Fina's tomb is in the church, and there are frescoes detailing her life. She was only 15 years old when she died, and she spent her life in San Gimignano. She was diagnosed with a terminal illness when she was only about 13, and she decided to lay on a wood plank on the floor rather than a bed in order to suffer more and to offer her suffering to God so that she could grow closer to Him. As she got sicker she grew very weak, and mice began to feed on her flesh. Finally she died, and all that was left was rotting, mouse chewn flesh. Not a very good image, right? Well God didn't think so either, so He turned her flesh into a pile of fresh flowers, and it is this miracle that made her a saint. I thought this was a beautiful story, and the frescoes about her life were very detailed and showed a lot of emotion in the faces of the people, many of which are small children. They are not happy paintings to look at, but the human emotion that they capture make them very captivating.During our tour with Bob we also went up to an old hilltop fortress from the 1300s. It had a tower that was still in good enough condition to climb, and the view from the top was magnificent. You could see farmland and little towns and houses speckling the landscape for miles and miles
all the way to the Apennines. Bob gave us the brilliant idea of returning to the fortress for a picnic, so that's what Ashley, Ania, Allyson, and I did. After our tour was over we went to an old church that had been converted into a wine shop. Here we sampled some of the white wine called Vernaccia, which is the San Gimignano region is famous for. I bough a bottle, and I am going to try to save it long enough to bring it home. I usually prefer red wine, but this is definitely the best white wine I've ever tasted. It is a sweeter and wetter wine than many, but it is great for a before dinner drink to whet the pallet. After purchasing our wine, we made our way to the coop where we bought fresh bread, Brie cheese, pesto, peach juice, and Pringles (the one American addition to our meal). On our way up to the fortress we stopped in one of the local sausage shops and bought some wild boar sausage. San Gimignano is famous for this type of sausage, and it was very good, I must say. We had a very enjoyable picnic with all of this food and a bottle of wine, and after our picnic we decided to just lay in the grass and take a nap. It just felt so good to lay in the sun and be warm, and I just kept thinking of how it would be if we were in Minnesota this time of year. Sorry to make some of you jealous, but just know that I do think of you occasionally while I'm laying in the sun. If I could bottle up the sun and send some to you, I would. But since I can't, I'll just enjoy it for myself.
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