The power went out on our last day at Le Torri. Then it came on again, then it went out again. Back and forth. Needless to say, we didn’t have much internet access, so it was hard to plan our day. The guys were contemplating a cooking class in Firenze, but they hadn’t heard back. Plan B was to head to Siena again.

I went to the Le Torri office and called about private a class. The man said he’d have to check with the chef and call me back. About an hour later the class was scheduled, another day in Firenze. Steve and Orion had to meet the chef at 4:30 by the Dante statue. Rebecca and I sat with them until the chef came, then left to shop.

But first, one last gelato break. We walked around a lot, looking for a bag for Rebecca and shoes for me. Neither of us got what we wanted, but Rebecca got some cool shoes. Around 8:00 we met back up with the guys. They had eaten the food they made, but Rebecca and I were still hungry so we stopped and ate. While we ate it started raining really hard. There was lightening and thunder – reminded me of Ohio.

The guys enjoyed the cooking class. They learned how to make a simple sauce and all the ways to add to it for variety. And they hand-made some pasta! Here’s some info on the class. They both felt it was well worth it, and would have loved taking several more classes.

We went to bed around 11:00p or 12:00a and woke up at 3:00a to get ready and leave. On the drive to the airport I started noticing these little, tiny things on the road that looked like leaves, then realized they were frogs. At one point the quantity of frogs increased severely, such that I COULD NOT avoid running them over. I concluded that it was some sort of rite of initiation – if you go and sit in the road without getting run over, you win the respect of your froggy peers.

The flight home was so freaking tiring. On the first flight there was a woman ripping pages out of a magazine. It was EXTREMELY annoying – it sufficiently interrupts both sleeping and reading. I kept thinking, why don’t you do that at home?!?! I think it wasn’t her magazine, but she ripped out so many pages, she may as well have taken it!

By the time we got home I had been awake for 19 hours and operating on 3 or so hours of sleep. Luckily I managed to stay awake until 9pm, for a total of 27 waking hours. What a tiring journey!