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I just realized that I've never been in a country the drives the "wrong" side of the road-- US, Canada, Japan, Greece and Italy all drive the same way. Funny that. Anyways.
Headed to Pisa to check out the tower as is required, and finished that pretty quick. Was definitely worth visiting, but don't think for a second that you should stay there. And the number of people pulling the "holding up the tower" thing was hilarious. I went for the oft-ignored but much-preferred "pushing down the tower" pic 😊 The area was full of people lounging around waiting for the other attractions to open, which made for a pretty cool scene. The whole walled city thing is kind of cool. And the contrast between the white walls and green grass of the "Plaza of Miracles" where the tower is located is also cool. I decided, however, that I still had enough time to try to visit a town that I wanted to see but thought I would miss-- Siena.
This is where I'm finally convinced that my eurail pass is worth it. I literally just hopped on the trains between Florence, Pisa, and Siena without having to do
anything. Convenient. And some of the scenery on the trip was incredible. There really doesn't seem to be any unused wilderness in this part of Italy, but the regular fields of whatnot blend in with "nature" really well, and are really pretty (as always, see pics). Once I got to Siena, I headed out from the train station with zero idea where I was headed, what to see or what direction to go. After about 30 minutes of uphil climb with no real progress as far as I could tell, I found a tourist couple that I ended up just stalking until I saw the ever-present "tourist trap cart". From there, I just followed the crowd 😊
Siena is a great place, built on a series of hills in the Trademark Italian jampacked fashion. When I say a series of hills, realize that makes this NOT as easy to walk as Florence, as the hills are pretty severe. That didn;t stop me though 😉 It's interesting for the fact that it doesn't try to built the hills around the city, instead being quite happy with leaving the streets in the shape of the hills they were built on. After
a series of shops that I'm sure would interest me more if I were into shopping, I ended up at the Piazza di Campo. This place is a HUGE half-dome dip-in-the-ground empty space in the middle of such a crowded city. If it weren't so hot, I'd have probably taken a nap here too (which seems to be my new theme). Then I went on to the Dumomo of this city, which is SO SHINY it could send messages into space. It also had this cool art style using half-circle indentations for stenciling in the marble.
After that I decided to try the random wandering thing that worked so well in Florence. Figured I had 3 hours to get back to the station, what could go wrong? Ahem. So I found a university terrace garden with good views of the southern part of the city, whereas I had walked up the northern side. This maybe should have tipped me off that I was going the wrong way, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I also found a crowd with music and joined it to find that a dancing school was having a public practice, which was chARRming. Also ended
up wandering into a military fort (not very well protected), and told to leave by a camo'ed guy with a series of grunts and "hey"s. Some more random wandering, and I started to realize that my idea of "down = good" wasn't panning out. Someone told me when asked that the train station was "very far, on the north side of Siena". Great. I tried following directions for a while, but everyone was trying to make me go to a bus station, which it turns out wouldn't work because the bus didn't show up for 2 hours, therefore getting to the train station too late for the train back to Florence. So. I backtracked. Luckily there are a lot of recognizable random HUEG only-for-looks buildings in Siena to use as landmarks. Another good 90 minutes of walking and I managed to get on the train. The ride back was both relaxing (stupid heel bruises) and scenic-- I have a great video which you aren't going to see for a while because Europe doesn't believe in real broadband (RAGE). Hopefully the pics will do for now. When I actually am able to upload my vids I'll have to put a nice
big CAPSTASTIC NOTE in the newest post to let yall know you can backtrack.
Cinque Terre next. Blogariah out.
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