Firenze

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Last weekend was pretty cool. My roommates Erik, Garrett, and me went on a roundabout tour of Tuscany which was a blast. We started our weekend by getting on the train and going to Siena, which is the home of the craziest horse race I've ever heard of. The town is divided into 14 neighborhoods and the neighborhoods are very competitive and territorial. So, each year, to decide which neighborhood is the best, the main piazza of the town is covered in dirt and the neighborhoods put on a horse race. Each neighborhood has a jockey, and the winner gets bragging rights for the year. But, there's a twist, because physical violence is allowed. Jockey's try to knock each other off of their horses, and it's a no holds barred violence-fest.

After Siena, we went to Florence to see some important museums and monuments. Unfortunately, you have to book your trips to the really important museums (like Academia, which holds the statue of David) in advance, and we did no such thing, so we were up a creek without a paddle when it came to seeing anything of serious significance. However, the city itself was beautiful, and we saw the Duomo (the cathedral of Florence) and also went to a science museum and an art museum, so all in all it was a pretty good trip. My favorite, of course, was the science museum. Even though everything was written in Italian, it was all fascinating to look at. We even got to see Galileo's middle finger. How many people can say that a man who's been dead for 500 years gave them the finger?? Not many, but I can.

On the way to our next stop, we saw the leaning tower of Pisa. It was alright.

Finally, we went to Viareggio, which was a beach town that reminded me a lot of San Diego, but more expensive. There wasn't much to see or do that didn't involve spending massive amounts of dough, so I laid out on the public beach (which was about as wide as a bus and about as long as 4 football fields... Imagine 500 Italians half naked crammed in a space fit for about 10. I miss Capo...) And then went to dinner.

The weekend was pretty good but what I'm really looking forward to is the Stones concert and the Fourth of July. We're going to try to get into the Hard Rock again.

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