I woke up bright and early Saturday to get in some last minute studying before our final at 10 a.m. Turns out the final wasn’t bad at all, I think I made a 98? After getting out of the final around 10:15, we had a little break before our professors and Marco had a wine lunch for us at 1 p.m. at a really nice restaurant in town, which was actually amazing. We had tomato and spinach bruschetta with a chardonnay, homemade pasta noodles with boar (SO DELICIOUS) with one of the red wines we had at Antinori La Braccesca, and a beef and arugula salad paired with a super amazing Super Tuscan from 2009, courtesy of Marco. It was a wonderful way to wrap up the month with everyone, teachers included.
After lunch, a few of us headed over to Marco’s shop to have another glass, buy a bottle for later, hang out, and pick up some presents. We ran into the medieval market and festival that the town is putting on this weekend, so I decided to get involved and paid to try to shoot at an apple with a bow and arrow…I didn’t quite hit the apple, but I did make it on the backboard every time! After what seems like the whole day, we finally headed back up to the dorms around 5:30 for a quick nap/rest before dinner and a trip up to the fortress to watch the most beautiful sunset I think I have ever seen (which is saying something).
Watching the sunset at the fortress was one of the coolest things I did while in Cortona. The fortress sits at the highest point of Cortona and overlooks the entirety of Tuscany and the valley. We all brought the bottle of wine we had bought at Marco’s earlier and just hung out for over two hours reliving the past month together, taking cute pictures, and watching the sun sink behind the mountains in the distance. A few tears might have also been shed. Thinking back on it now, I still smile at just how perfect it was (hello, sappy Clara). We had such an awesome group of people that we all got along so well together, which made the month that much more fun. 150 pictures, a bottle of wine (I shared a bottle of O’Lillo! with Hoopie), and a sunset later, we headed down to town around 10 to hit up Lion’s Well, but ended up coming back pretty early.
Sunday morning our TA offered to make us a nice breakfast, so we all chipped in some euros and she cooked up some toast with eggs, cheese, and bacon that was almost like a taste of home. After packing up the majority of our things we headed down the hill to the medieval festival to take everything in one last time. We grabbed some lunch at Bar 500 where I split the vegetarian pizza with Hoopie. After another stop for gelato, I bought some gifts then headed back up to go on one last run to take it all in.
This was our final night in Cortona–I think I just teared up typing that–so we wanted to get one last delicious Italian meal. A group of us ended up going to a restaurant I had yet to try. I ordered an amazing dish of pesto pasta with pinenuts, basil, and parmigiano, and accompanied it with a glass of Chianti. We had an early morning ahead of us as we had to be completely packed and out of our rooms by 6:30 a.m. as well as be ready to get on a bus to Rome for Monday, so we headed back up and hung out in the common room for a bit before going to bed.
Major picture-age below: