FIRENZE

So I'm a little behind on my blog posts.. My Professor gives us about 200 pages to read a night for class, so that takes up quite a bit of time. Anyway, no more excuses! Two weekends ago I went to Florence, where I met a friend from AU, Lauren, who is studying in Nice. We got there Thursday afternoon, grabbed a snack, and walked around Florence until dinner time. The hostel we were staying in a ridiculously nice - it had a pool, jacuzzi, restaurant, and bar! The shower was 10000 times better than the one in my apartment, I was sad to leave it. Anyway, the food in the restaurant was really cheap.. so we ate there the whole time. The theme of the trip was see how little money we could spend, yet somehow, we still spent a lot. We headed out to an Irish Pub on Thursday night and just chatted and caught up and such. Friday we went to Siena. We took a bus, which took a little over an hour. It was horrible weather, really rainy and cold, so we ran into the first cafe we could find and hung out for bit. After warming up, we walked around some more and saw the sights of Siena. Lauren studied in Siena for a few months a few years ago, so we walked down to where she lived. It was great cause she knew where to go the whole time! Eventually it got nice out, and the day was much more enjoyable. We went to the Palazzo Publico, which houses a series of frescoes on good versus bad government. That was really interesting to see, they are from the 14th century, so not all of the frescoes were in very good shape. It was impressive nonetheless. We also went to the Duomo, which was crazy cool. It's really bizarre how elaborate it is... the Duomo is Florence is really cool on the outside, but pretty simple on the inside. However, Duomo in Siena is ornate both inside and out. There is hardly an inch that isn't covered with statues or paintings or mosaics. I wish I could post pictures! Anyway, those are the two main things to see in Siena, but we walked around for a long time and hung out in the Piazza del Campo. Siena was really beautiful (especially after it stopped raining...) and its a cool place just to wander around.
Saturday we stayed in Florence. We had both been to Florence before, so we didn't feel it was necessary to stand in line for hours upon hours to get into the Uffizi or the Accademia. But it was good because we got to see some less well-known sights and churches. However, we did go into Santa Maria del Fiore and do the whole climb up to the Duomo, where you can look out over Florence. Can't really pass that up. I had never been to the Santa Maria Novella Church, so that was pretty cool too. We did some more wandering, got gelato, hung out on Ponte Vecchio, etc. etc. Sunday we saw some more churches (i feel useless explaining them without pictures...) and wandered around some more, and then both headed our separate ways in the afternoon. We had a really good time, even with the bad weather.
Then it was back to Rome! We didn't have class on Monday because it was the day Italy became a republic, therefore national holiday.. but it was rainy (AGAIN!) and everything was closed.. so I didn't do much all day. Its good to have a day to chill every now and again!