Day in Florence & Day Trip to Siena/San Gimignano

On Wednesday I had Emperors of Rome in the morning, and my Dante and Galileo class was cancelled for the day so I had a good 7 hours-Hillary and I decided to go into Florence! We went shopping, but I surprisingly didn't buy anything. We went to MaMMaMia for lunch and it was amaaazing! It was our first meal outside of the Villa food. We ordered a class of Chianti and I had a pizza with spicy salami and Hillary had a caprese salad and cooked spinach with garlic-and of course we had to end the meal with our first shot of espresso...YUMMY!! That night we tried to find a place to have a drink in Sesto and we ran into our Italian friend and he showed our American group a great place, but I was too tired so I didn't stay out with the rest of them and headed home!

Thursday morning I went into Florence for my art history class. On every Thursday we have class on site in the city of Florence, and visit museums, cathedrals, etc. We went inside the cathedral of the Duomo and it was beautiful! I have never seen anything like the paintings inside the dome, I can't wait to climb it! We also visited right across the way to the Baptistery, but had to catch a train home for lunch shortly after entering. I switched into the Italian Cinema class here, which will count for my humanities credit and that class is held on Tues/Thurs @ 2pm (I dropped Dante & Galileo to get into the class, but I think it is a good decision so far). Thursday night we decided to go out into Florence and we had a few places in mind to try, we started at "Twice" and no one was there so we went to "Slowly", which was just a normal pub and waited for "Yab" to open up - Yab is a great discotecta to go to on a Thursday night. I spoke a lot of Italian throughout the night, just trying to find places and calling a cab-I'm picking it up slowly :)

Breakfast was at 730 Friday morning and we headed out for Siena @ 8. Siena is so beautiful!! In the morning it was so foggy and you couldn't see anything, but by 11 it was clear. We visited the Cathedral of Siena and it was beautiful inside, unlike the Cathedral of Florence...but so different! We also had a tour of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo which contains Duccio's famous Maesta (1308-1311) and various other works by Sienese masters. Then free time came for lunch! Hillary and I went shopping and we both found cute leather purses for 30-40 euro each and then had a cappuccino standing at the bar...if you sit down there is a cover charge. We then meet up with the rest of the gang in the Piazza del Campo which is their town square and houses the Palazzo Pubblico that we visited and saw many great frescoes. Then we departed from Siena and went to San Gimignano for an hour to walk around and I had my first gelato experience!! I had limone and mulberry which was so delicious!

After a long day, I just crashed and looked up traveling plans when most of the villa went out for a night on the town! Getting up early tomorrow morning and catching a train to Lucca with Hillary and Ally :)

Grazie, Ciao!