 |
| Il Duomo |
I'll start with Thursday. The days lost between my last post and then have been lost forever. Too bad. So Thursday. My Italian class was cancelled, and so I got to sleep in really really late. Yipeee. Then I had theology, which was as terrible as it always is. Thursday night, we went out with basically everyone to Scholars, and stayed pretty late. Which was pretty unfortunate, because we left early Friday morning for our semester excursion.
 |
| "fake" David |
At 7:45 we met at the front desk to leave for our trip to Florence! There was 7 of us this time, because my roommate joined us (she was sick last time). We took the metro to Termini, and then a fast train to Florence. It took a little over an hour and wasn't too bad, but we were all basically zombies from the night before. Oops. When we got to Florence, we checked into the hotel, and had a little while to ourselves. A couple of us went out to get some food (we chose McDonalds... how Italian of us...) and then we went back to rest and get settled. We had a walking tour that afternoon, which lasted many many hours but showed us just about everything Florence has to offer. We started by walking through an outdoor marketplace, which I found really cool. Then we saw some churches that were made for/by the Medici's. Next stop was the Duomo, which is absolutely beautiful. We went inside, and its beautiful in there too. Very impressive. We also saw the "fake" David, which is actually the mold used to make the real one, so I don't really get why its the "fake" one, but whatever. We saw the House of Dante, which was cool, although I would have liked to go inside. We also got to see the Ponte Vecchio, which is really amazing, but I didn't get the pictures I was hoping to get. That was a little depressing. The pictures I did get came out okay, but I could have done so much better! We ended up in some big square with a really big church, but I don't recall its name. The tour took a couple of hours, and so afterwards, we went back to the hotel and had some time to ourselves before our group dinner.
 |
| Ponte Vecchio |
During that time, the sun decided to set, and since we had a balcony in our hotel room, I went out and took some beautiful pictures. Tuscany really is beautiful. For dinner, our guides (Domenico and Maurizio) took us to a traditional Florentine restaurant, and instead of each ordering individually, Domenico ordered for us all so we could try different things. We started with a pasta dish that was like spaghetti with meat sauce. We found out later that the meat in the sauce was wild boar... interesting. It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad either. Next we had gnocchi in tomato sauce, which was delicious. For the next course, Domenico ordered us about a million different kinds of meats. There was chicken and beef and lamb and pork and who knows what else. I ate some chicken and beef, and it was all very good. For dessert, I had tiramisu, which was absolutely delicious. We were all so full after the meal. We were walking back together and ended up seeing an outdoor concert of sorts going on, so we stopped for a minute to listen. Three people from the group decided to go out that night, but the rest of us were so completely wiped out from the long day and long night before that we just went back and went to sleep.
 |
| Sunset over Tuscany <3 |
Saturday morning, we went to Siena. We took the bus so that we could get a glimpse of the Tuscan countryside, but I ended up sleeping most of the way there. Siena is really beautiful though. When we got there, we walked to the church of San Domenico, which houses the head and finger of Saint Catherine. That was interesting, yet kind of disgusting. After that, we walked to the big piazza, Piazza del Campo. There, we decided to climb the Torre del Mangia. It's a really tall tower, so we walked up about a million steps in really close quarters... Even me, being as short as I am, had to duck at times. There was actually somewhere around 400 stairs. It was exhausting, but the views from the top were absolutely amazing. You could see for a long ways, all across the Tuscan countryside. We climbed back down, and then had a group lunch in a nearby restaurant. Like the day before, Domenico ordered for all of us. First, we had bruschetta, cold cuts (proscuitto, salami, and another kind of pork) and some sort of cheese. Then, we had an absolutely delicious spinach and cheese ravioli, with a creamy cheesy sauce that was one of the best things I've eaten in Italy. Then we had a local dish of Siena, which is thick spaghetti-like pasta with meat sauce (the meat in this is some sort of special tuscan cow...). It was good. We were so full after that. We walked to the Duomo of Siena, which looks a lot like the Duomo in Florence, and then we had some time to ourselves. Our group walked around the small streets of Siena and into some of the shops before we ended up back at Piazza del Campo where we sat, relaxed and did some people-watching while two of the guys played catch. It was really pleasant, actually. Eventually, it was time to meet up with the group again, and then we took the bus back to Florence.
 |
| Torre del Mangia |
Back in Florence, we had the night to ourselves. I ate a quick panini for dinner, and then just hung out for awhile. We decided to go out that night, so we all hung out in our hotel room for awhile, and then went out. We ended up going to two different bars. It was a good time. I don't know what time we got back, but it was pretty late, so we went right to sleep.
 |
| One view from the Torre del Mangia |
The next morning, we met up at 9 am, so we could go to the Uffizi museum. Theres some pretty amazing artwork there, but it wasn't as entertaining as it could have been, because we had a tourguide, which meant that I didn't get to decide on my own what I wanted to look at and what I wanted to skip, or how long I wanted to spend on each piece, which I find very frustrating. I might go back to Florence just so I can go back to the museum and take pictures of the Ponte Vecchio. haha. After the museum, it was basically time to go. We went to the hotel to pick up our stuff, and then headed to the train station. We were taking the slow train back, which took more than 4 hours. It was a little ridiculous. But I was so happy to be back in Rome! I slept really well Sunday night after such an eventful weekend.
 |
| More from the Torre del Mangia |
Monday morning I had service to do. It was fun, as usual. We did the hokey pokey, and sang "O Christmas Tree" with the english teacher which was interesting. Then the nun read to the kids and had her repeat everything she said, which was boring for me, so I can't imagine how the kids felt. Apparently, she wants me to bring stuff for the kids to do... So I guess I'm going to try that. Yesterday afternoon, I had my permesso di soggiorno appointment. It was kind of ridiculous, since they won't be finished processing it before I leave the country, so we basically went there and waited for a couple of hours to have them stamp a paper saying we had been there. It took up most of the afternoon.
 |
| Duomo in Siena |
Today, I had my wonderful art midterm. ick. It wasn't that bad though. Then was theology. ugh. Then I've been hanging around waiting to be able to register for classes for next semester. I'm now completely registered, and actually really excited about the classes I'll be taking. Now if only I had somewhere to live... hmmm.
 |
| cute little street in Siena |
Well, that's all for now, I'll try to update at least once more before I leave for Prague on Friday!! I'm so excited!
No comments:
Post a Comment