Day 5: May 10th

This morning I woke up a little later than I wanted to and ended up having to stuff my purse with these little waffle-cookie things. They’re really yummy and they’re shaped like a waffle but look and taste like a cookie. The Italian breakfast is usually all sweet stuff like croissants. They also had a juicer so you could juice your own oranges, which I very much enjoyed.

We went to the quarries today in Carrara (the mountains) and we got to go to where they cut marble into sculptures. While we were there we got to see a couple sculptors work, which was very interesting and very very dusty. I learned so much on this trip. White marble with no streaks is 100% calcium citrate and that the pink marble that was at the sculpture place is from Iran. The sculptures were very pretty and I could tell that they took a while.

Next stop was a souvenir shop on the way up a mountain. I was completely unprepared for the bathroom there. It was a hole in the floor you had to squat over…not very easy for someone with balance issues. At the souvenir shop I invested in gifts for my mum and my sister. I would tell you what I got them, but they’re probably going to read this.

Now on to the quarry! It was frightening doing the zig-zags up the side of the mountain, but it was definitely worth it. The quarry is in my top 5 favorite places. It was just so cool getting to learn about how they used to cut out and move blocks 20 tons of marble down the mountain. They used to use a diamond wire with a very small diameter to cut the marble out of the mountain after they took a giant chisel and hammer to split it on its vein. The vein will always run at a 45 degree angle because of how the mountain rose.

After the quarry we headed to Pietrasanta to have lunch (super yummy spinach and meat ravioli) and to check out the church there. I had my first taste of real Italian gelato there in the Piazza. I was so shocked and amazed that the melon gelato tasted like I was eating a cantaloupe. I was NOT expecting that at all. Once we’d had our gelato and checked out the church we returned to the hotel via bus and had a little free time until our group dinner at Bagno Stefanella. I had penne type pasta with pesto sauce, which was basically this green, fairly strong, basil sauce that I didn’t exactly care for. There were options of pasta with tomato-basil sauce and pasta with fish sauce (smelled like tuna, hated it). After dinner, Danielle, Collin (new friend), and grabbed a bottle of Limonechello (lemon flavored vodka I think) and went down to the beach to have a drink and just hangout. We ended up coming back to the hotel because it got chilly and we decided to hang with the other group there. It was fun and a pretty nice night. I got to see the true colors of some people, which I’m glad I got to see.