Week 6 - Monte Argentario

        

This semester doesn’t allow for a slow week but all things considered, this was one of the least eventful. That being said the week had its own unique highlights. On Thursday, I had an olive oil and basketry workshop. We traveled to a nearby olive oil producer and learned about the process of extracting olive oil. What I found interesting is that the process of extracting the oil hasn’t really changed in hundreds of years but the tools they use have made the job much easier than in the past. For lunch, we were able to try some of their olive oils and other products. One of my favorite things to eat here for an appetizer is olive paste spread on toasted bread. They prepared a fantastic meal for us and we certainly had our fill of olive oil. 

Old tools they used to use to harvest olives

Old olive presses used to extract oil

This is a graph I found online to show the process of how olive oil is made.

The second part of our workshop was a class on making baskets and trivets for hot pots. Our teachers have been making these baskets for several years and were great teachers even though they weren’t able to speak much English. The baskets we made were made from willow branches that our instructors had gathered. The process was tricky at first to understand but after a while, things started to click. The important part of the process was making sure that when you weaved the branches you pulled tightly to lock the branches together. I decided not to make a full basket because I was worried about how I would get it back home in my luggage and instead made a trivet for hot pots. Although many of my classmates made wonderful baskets that they can use during Easter. (I haven’t found out yet if collecting Easter eggs is a tradition here.)

Among the classwork and the workshops we have we managed to squeeze in another trip to the coast. Friday afternoon we jumped on a train that headed to a small coastal town named Monte Argentario. This weekend was a great break from some of the very busy weeks we had before. We didn’t have any homework looming over our shoulders so we really just took the opportunity to stare out at the water and take a deep breath. One of my favorite parts about this trip was that our Airbnb has two bikes that we could use so Aenya and I were able to ride bikes along the coast and watch the sailboats out on the sea. 

We thought that maybe there was a sailboat race happening off the coast because there were around 20 boats all following a similar course.

Aenya and Natalie enjoying the views

One of the main highlights of being abroad during the semester is that the tourist season is not in full swing. This means that cities like Monte Argentario are not packed and everything has a much slower pace. Most of the people walking the streets are locals so it was easy to see which restaurants are popular with the locals. For lunch on Saturday Aenya and I took advantage of the fresh seafood available to us and had a delicious meal of oysters, fried shrimp, and calamari, as well as swordfish fillets. While there, we also bought shrimp from the local fish stand and made a dinner of lemon garlic spaghetti with shrimp. After all the fantastic seafood we had on this trip, it was hard to get on the train back home. Even though it was a short trip I was left with many great memories of this small coastal town. 

Ciao!