Today was the best day so far! Last night I (Taylor) looked up some fun things to do in Florence other then sight seeing. I came upon horse back riding in Tuscany and we decided to book it. We met our tour guides at 9:30am and took an hour drive to this small ranch in Tuscany. When we arrived the guides asked our group if any of us had experience riding horses. Our group consisted of Nicole and I and another couple. I was the only one in the group who had experience with horses. I told the guides that my cousin (Christine) owned horses growing up and we had rode them and gone to the ranch a few times. THIS WAS A MISTAKE! Haha. By riding Christine's horse I meant that I had literally sat on her horse while she walked him slowly around the ranch. Next thing I knew everyone is on their really nice horses and then out comes mine ---which was the biggest one called Crazy Horse. I asked why they called her Crazy Horse and they explained to me that she was a free spirit and really did not like to listen. By this time I was pretty nervous because she seemed a little too wild for me. But finally we were on. We both had no clue what we were doing and of course my horse decided to stop randomly. The guide explained to me that I needed to kick her side to get her to stop eating grass and catch up. Finally after what felt like five minutes she started sprinting to the rest of the group. I thought I was going to die but after that incident we finally bonded and she listened to me ---except for when she tried to bite my foot haha:) Nicole's horse was really nice and listened to everything she told her to do!

We got to ride the horses around for two hours in the Chianti wine vineyards. It was AMAZING!!!! After our ride we arrived back at the ranch and had some homemade wine. It was really good and we had a few glasses. After riding, we were taken to a Tuscan restaurant that looked over a really pretty pond. We thought the program would give us a "taste" of Tuscan foods, but we ended up getting a full three course meal and tons of wine! We were very impressed with the program and the food was amazing!

After what should have been dinner, but was really only lunch, we headed up to a midevil castle where we had a Chianti wine tasting. We tasted 4 different wines and you could definitely tell the difference between all of them.

After our wine tasting it was time to head back to Florence. We were both tired and needed a nap!

See our Florence album for pictures from today!