Blogs from Siena, Tuscany, Italy, Europe - page 12

CIAO!! So I am finally here. It took forever to arrive but i am here. The plane had a few bumps here and there. That combined with my fear of flying and my nerves made it an unpleasant 8 hours. However, we arrived an hour early so that made up for the rest. I would rather be on the ground than in the air. Once I got to the airport and made it through customs I found some of the other girls from Siena and we waited for the whole crew to arrive. Because we were there at 7 am it was a long wait; we didn’t leave the airport in Rome until 130/2. Then we had a lovely 3 hour bus ride to Siena during which most of us tried to catch up on some ... read more

From requests from my mom and Sarah, I am going to try to do my best to keep updating my blog more frequently (with no promises of quality or length of the entries...). I arrived safely in Italy on Monday morning with no problems, although it was probably one of my more absurd airport experiences. My roommates and some other friends in Siena had requested that I bring back some different kinds of candy from America, so my mom and I had gone to Target and Costco to load up on a variety of sweets. I guess my eyes were a little bigger than my luggage allowance, and when I went to check my baggage it was very overweight. My parents and I began unpacking my baggage in the front of the check-in line at the ... read more

Apologies for the lack of updates, but the drive toward the end of the season is always a crazy one. Epic beach trip to Castiglione della Pescaia happened, and even though it was gorgeous, the only picture I took was of my excellent seafood pizza. Shows where my priorities have turned as of late. There was a return trip to Massa Marittima and a successful entrance into the OPEN archaeological museum. The museum was a total waste of time, however. The whole thing smelled like a bathroom, and there was actually a display on spelunking (spelling?) complete with dummies hanging from the ceiling as if rapelling off the wall. Photos would have been taken, but closed circuit cameras and a grumpy museum front desk person prevented me from doing so. Key: Purchased Italian orange road worker ... read more

A weekend of epic length (we got Monday off) of course gave ample opportunity to do epic things. And epic things I've done. Saturday was a trip to Chiusi to view me some urns (which I hope to focus upon for my dissertation), and the trip started off right with a nice bout of carsickness on twisty Italian roads. The museum was great, but we ended up having to pay full entry price (even though some of us are students), the lighting was not so great, and they didn't have a ton on view. Nevertheless, the things they had out were gorgeous. Besides, we ate at a restaurant called "Il Bucchero" (bucchero is the name for the native Etruscan pottery) and continued our tour of french fries in Italy. Not too impressed this time. We got ... read more

Greetings from Vescovado. Today is Palio day (the crazy awesome horserace in Siena), and I opted to stay in Vescovado, watch the race on TV from the commy bar, then go to dinner in the next town over after the race. We've had a few torrential rainstorms the past week or so, along with an epic one last night, so much of excavation has consisted of bailing the trenches out from all the rain water. Digging through mud = not fun. Short entry this time, but it's to share a very important link. Our photographer, Tom Lingner, is putting photos of us in action on his website at thomaslingner dot com /pogg2009 A dopo!... read more