It's nearly impossible to turn down gelato and lardo

This villa is amazing. That is probably a redundant sentence, since I don't think it's common to complain about things such as villas. Such as, "Wow, that new BMW is great, but I just don't need one". No one says things like that, but I digress.
We had our first day of lecture, the first one being on wine and marketing given by the charming and incredibly fantastic Marchesi Diletta Frescobaldi, whose family has been producing very noteworthy (read: expensive) Tuscan wines for 700 years. She is a member of the 32nd generation of Frescobaldis involved in the family business. And I was impressed I can name my great-grandparents. She was fantastic, and actually joined us for what may have been the simplest Tuscan dinner she has ever eaten. The food was hearty and cheap, and the restaurant certainly did not have any Frescobaldi wines, but it was nice to meet someone who has a street named after them.
The other lecturers were more nutrition based, and full of endearing mispronounciations and lilting accents. Obesity doesn't sound as bad when its pronounced with a perfect, heavy Florentine accent. We then went on a tour of La Pietra, the main villa and former house of the Acton family. The 5,000 some pieces of art were interesting, but their decorating taste was abysmal. I didn't see any of the ghosts that are reported to roam the property, and the house is much less dramatic then NYU's acquisition of the property. Sir Acton was exhumed to ensure that the Princess claiming to be his illegitimate relative had no claim to the incredible land and the contents of the estate - among them, a signed first edition of Ulysses. The beautiful rolling wildflower gardens and blooming lemon blossoms are romantic and entrancing, and we have full access to them the entire time we stay here. I'm planning on doing a fantastic amount of sitting there when the lavender blooms in a week or so.
Today we went to Greve, a "slow" city, formed after a McDonald's opened by the Spanish Steps in Roma. Italy revolted, seeing this as a slap in the face of a country so proud of and known for having one of the most recognized and lauded food histories and cultures. They started the idea of "slow food", and Greve is a town with some beautiful butcher shops with aging proscuitto practically dripping from the ceiling, fish stands with shimmering and fresh and vegetables with colors so vivid they looked like they were painted.
Verrazzano vineyards in Chianti was one thousand years of San Giovese grapes over hundreds of acres of rolling hills. We toured their olive oil, balsamico and wine facilities. We had a tasting of wine and charcuterie (more lardo, and a fantastic wild boar proscuitto they make with the boar that roams through the fields) where Jaclyn, Natanya and I may have scared our professor with the amount of laughing that went on. It seems true that the people in Florence speak the most proper Italian. Everyone strings sentences together so correctly, and even when our tour guide was discussing something so simple as oak types, he made it sound like old Italian poetry. We came back into Firenze, got more gelato, bought some fantastic sunglasses for Jackie and my birthdays, had a little wine, and laughed even harder at Pegah's issues identifying the sights in town.
"What's that big covered bridge over there? It looks really impressive."
"Um, Pegah, thats the Ponte Vecchio."
I've actually lost my voice a little from laughing so hard and doing loud imitations of our professor and the comical Italian translations. Cooking school tomorrow should be interesting - going to see some of the sights Mr. Tibbets recommended - a few older churches and pieces of art usually overlooked by tourists. It's nice to have a later start to the day. I've been doing an insane amount of eating and laughing, but not so much sleeping. But no one comes to Florence to just sleep.