Sunday, March 13, 2011

Traveling in Tuscany


Ciao everyone!

I had a pretty busy weekend traveling to a couple different places around Tuscany. Let me start with my day on Friday.

Friday- First, I went to my 9 a.m. class (I highly recommend not signing up for a Friday class!), then right after I got out Bobby and I went right to the bus station to get two tickets to go to Siena. I kept hearing such great things about Siena, so I knew I definitely wanted to go. It took about an hour and 30 mins to get there and the ride was a little tough. It was so bumpy the whole time and I learned that I definitely like taking the train better. Usually, everyone travels by train to get to places outside of Florence, but in this case it's actually harder because there's no direct train into the city center of Siena. Well anyway, once we got to Siena, I knew why everyone had such good things to say about it. It was absolutely beautiful. Siena is really different from Florence. It's really hilly and the whole town is very old, unlike Florence where there are parts where everything is modern. I really enjoyed the old feel of it. We walked around for a bit, ate some good food, saw some really awesome cathedrals and then we went to the top of a tower to see all of Siena. This was my favorite part of the day and I fell in love with Siena because it was so beautiful. After all of the walking through the hilly city, I was starting to get exhausted and we headed back to Florence after spending about 5 hours in Siena. I'm gonna have to say that outside of Florence, Siena is one of my favorite cities so far.

Saturday- Bobby and I hopped on a 12:30 train to go to Lucca, which is also in Tuscany. I don't know why, but on Italian trains, they don't announce what stop you're at, so it's like a guessing game on the train if you don't know where you're going. We actually found two girls who are also studying abroad at FUA and they told us where to get off. When the train arrived at Lucca, we got out of the train station and found out that Lucca is still surrounded by ancient walls. It was really awesome. In order to get into the city center, you have the go through some corridors in the walls to get in. We spent most of our time inside museums and looking at different cathedrals. My favorite part of the day was when we went into a baptistery that was built on ancient ruins. They let you go downstairs and see the ruins, like roman baths and mosaics. It was so cool to able to see things that are that old dating all the way back to the 2nd century. Overall, it was a really beautiful city. Before we left, we walked around on the top of the wall where they built a path and we saw everything inside and outside of the city walls. It was so pretty, but my favorite place of the weekend was definitely Siena!

My day today is filled with studying unfortunately. Midterms start tomorrow, I can't believe it. Time is flying. I think there's only about 8 more weeks left and I can't imagine how fast it's gonna go after spring break. I have 3 midterms tomorrow, so I better start studying!

I'll write soon!
- Kelsey

No comments:

Post a Comment