Almost home!

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So for the first time in 27 days, I have no ruins to visit, no museums to tour, no cities to travel to, and no masterpieces to see. I have to say, it's kind of relaxing.

Let's see... Tuesday I took a bus to Siena. I was kind of disappointed (I think for some reason I had thought it would be more like Sorrento. Because they both start with S? Heh I have no idea), but it was a really neat city. It's definitely a medieval city for sure. The Piazza del Campo was pretty cool; it's not necessarily big, but twice a year (one is tomorrow actually) they have a horse race around the piazza. They've been doing this for hundreds of years and it's still just as big a deal as it was when they started. Ruth is actually going to be there when it happens, I'm hoping she sends me pictures!! Anyways, I walked all the way to the city center from the train station (it's literally uphill the entire way) and then bought a ticket that got me into the Duomo, Baptistery, Duomo Museum, "Panaramic Terrace," and some other thing that I didn't go to (it was kind of out of the way and I didn't want to search for it). Even after all the churches I've been in, I really enjoyed the Duomo. While still being Gothic, it had a different style to it than the Florentine churches. Like around the front, there were busts of popes all around the top which were really kind of creepy looking!

Wednesday I went to the Uffizi, which actually made me really angry. They had a lot of rooms closed off and several more rooms that you couldn't go in but only peek your head into. I was able to see a few things by Leonardo da Vinci and of course Botticelli's Primavera and Adoration of the Magi which I suppose are the main attractions of the museum, but I was still frustrated about not seeing so much of it.

Wednesday night, I again met up with Ruth. We went to a pizzeria off of Piazza della Signoria which was pretty good. It was kind of cold this night, or at least really breezy, so we went in church of hot chocolate. We finally stopped at this cafe that only had these two guys at the counter and got some of the best hot chocolate I've ever had. The guys, Marco and Andrea as we soon learned, were making fun of us for getting hot chocolate (apparently it was a weird time to drink hot chocolate?) and we ended up hanging out at the cafe with them for a few hours, eventually being joined by a couple of their friends, Gianni and Tomazzo. They were fairly drunk but they were very happy drunks, and I was able to try some limoncello curtesy of them. We eventually decided to walk towards the duomo and hung out there for a little bit. It was really nice to hang out with a group of people, and it was even nicer to be with a few guys without feeling like they just wanted to sleep with us at the end of the night (girls, I know Italian men are known for being hot and suave, but I really haven't found them to be that way. I've seen hardly any that are all that attractive, and for the most part, I feel like they just sit around waiting to prey on foreigners, more sleazy than sexy). For the most part, they spoke pretty good English, and Gianni's been studying English for the last eight years, so he was always there to translate in times of need. It was a good time.

Thursday I took the train to Pisa. It's funny: I originally hadn't planned on going to Pisa, but I loved it. For one thing, there's something about the leaning tower that just makes you smile. It's on the other side of Pisa from the train station, and walking there, you're surrounded by buildlings that are three or four stories high, so you can't really see anything but the buildlings right by you. So all of a sudden, the tower's just right in front of you! I got there around 11 or 12, but the earliest I could get a ticket to go in the leaning tower was 3:00. To kill time, I saw Pisa's Duomo and the Baptistery, and then enjoyed the grassy piazza it's all in by finding some shade and reading until it was time for me to go in the tower. That was quite an experience! You can tell the whole time you're in it that it's leaning, and let me tell you, going down stairs that already declining? Very weird and very hard! The view from the top was really cool--you could see for miles. I took lots of pictures (perhaps too many, but that's okay).

Yesterday I had been planning on doing nothing, but instead I went to Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens. It was hard to imagine people actually living in the Pitti Palace--a single room is the same size as my entire apartment! The gardens made me wish that I actually lived in Florence; they'd be nice to go to for the day with a picnic lunch or something, but all I could think at the time was that I just paid ten euros to walk around, when I've been walking plenty for free all month! It was pretty though. And there were all these slightly odd statues of men in red coats everywhere which I particularly enjoyed, I took pictures of a few of them.

Today I took a train to Rome. It was the first time I've had a train be late since I've been in Italy, so I got a little nervous, but alas, it finally came and I finally arrived in Rome. It was nice getting off a train and actually knowing where I was going for once.

Tomorrow, I wake up early, walk back to the train station, get on a shuttle train to the airport, and then get on a plane back to the United States!!! I have to say I'm kind of excited. I've had a good time here, and I'm really super glad I came, but the saying's true: there's no place like home!

Anyways, I finally was able to put the rest of my pictures up on photobucket. Be careful if you look at them--I took a lot in Florence!

I should probably start packing. I have no idea how I'm supposed to get everything home tomorrow!!!

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