So this weekend we decided to stay in Paderno and rest up for our upcoming week long travel break. Friday afternoon, the school sponsored a trip to Asolo, which is 30 minutes away from Paderno. This is also where the CIMBA MBA campus is located. Asolo is a lot bigger than Paderno and has so many different stores and restaurants. This village looked like what most people think of when imagine small towns in Italy. Since we had limited time in there, we quickly explored this so called "village" and found the bar some friends recommended to go to. Side note...all of the small towns are known as villages rather than towns or suburbs. The bar we relaxed at was located on the top of this hill that overlooked Asolo and other nearby villages. Since we were there early in the evening, we got to watch the sunset. As typical college students, none of us chose the option of sipping on a Coke in this bar. I ordered a mojito and the bartender had to go outside and pick fresh mint from his garden. Talk about fresh ingredients!
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Fountain in the Village Square.
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| Streets in Asolo |
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| Sunset in Asolo. |
On Saturday we went on a vineyard tour of a local winery called Villa Sandi. The Veneto region of Italy, which is where I am living in, is known for it's wine(or vino). Villa Sandi is known for making prosecco, which is sparkling wine. The other night at our etiquette dinner, I had their sparkling dessert wine and it was quite tasty! Anyways, we got a tour of the vineyard and learned the entire process of making prosecco. We learned how they tilt the bottle at certain angles for specific amounts of time, so the sediments for the wine could collect of the neck of the wine bottle. We walked down these cellars with endless hallways that had full walls of wine bottles. Our guide said that Villa Sandi stores about 1.5 million bottles at one time. The cool thing about these cellars was that they were located underground and below a river. So, the running water cooled down the cellars even more so. The guide also told us that some of their smaller cellars have been existence since World War I.
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| Barrels of Vino. |
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| One of the Cellars. |
Saturday night our Italian friends showed us the night life around Paderno. It was fun to finally be in an local Italian club were the CIMBA students didn't take over the entire place. There is a Sports Bar across the street from our campus and we tend to overwhelm the bar and out number the Italians. I think they find us entertaining because we noticed locals taking pictures of all of us and laughing. Anyways the club or shall I say discotech was a lot of fun! We ran into a this Italian on our way out of the club and he was quite a site for sore eyes! I won't say any more and just let you look at the picture for yourself. Next week I have my first travel week. We are headed to Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Munich! Until then, Ciao!
