Tuscany

I think the trip i took to tuscany, specifically Florence, was the best trip of my life. I love Florence and all its history and culture. I am very glad to be studying in Sevilla, don't get me wrong, but if I was gonna actually live somewhere in Europe for an extended period, i would like to live in Tuscany. The countryside is unreal! There are so many green and yellow hills covered in bushes and olive trees. I can see why the entire area is such a tourist attraction, but i find that fact a little sad as well. It seems to detract from how romantic it is.

So here's the basic outline of this little excursion: Sevilla, Pisa, Florence, Chianti area, Fiesole, Florence, Siena, Florence, Malpensa, Sevilla. jealous yet? lets see, we flew into pisa, so we made a pitstop to take the cliche and yet fantasic "look-i'm-holding-up-the-tower" pictures, and then took a train to Florence. But when we got there we discovered that just becuase a hostel advertises 24 hour reception doesn't necessarily make it true. sometimes it means they actually aren't there at around 8 o'clock at night, and you get to chill in the hallway for 45 minutes. but whatever, i'm not bitter. That night we met some american students on the steps of the duomo and they told us to go to a club called space and that it was good. they lied. it was full of drunk american students, not an italian in sight. this one kid legit couldn't walk. his two friends held him up saying "right, left, right, left" and they dragged him home. and here's the worst part: no entrance fee, no no no, they trick you. thay make you pay to leave. how ridiculous is that!?! needless to say, we didnt go back to space.

On Friday, we basically just walked all over florence. we went to the plaza del san lorenzo, the ponte vecchio, the duomo (duh), and then we split and i went walking around what was probably residential florence for about 2 hours. it was gorgeous. we got up on top of this hill and could just see everything. then we talked to this lady at a coffee shop and she told us about all these places we could go to. we ended up not going out that night though because we had plans for early the next morning...

The next morning, aka saturday, we were planning to go on a bike tour. the weather had forecasted rain, but we didnt let that dampen our spirits (oh yeah, that pun just happened) and we set out for the tour anyway. So after a nice little van ride with a driver from scottland named andy, we arrive in a castle in chianti. it is used as a winery, and basically made me fall in love with the countryside. not to mention the town itself. everything was so quiant and old. we toured the castle/winery and afterwards go tto try the wine. now at this point it has started raining quite hard and we realize the biking just isnt going to happen. so we tried several glasses of that wine. we also tried a lot of their superb olive oil and bread. then we went and got lunch.

since the tour ended early we decided we werent ready to go back to florence yet, and we asked andy to drop us off at some town near florence and we would just catch a bus back. So he took us to Fiesole, and we found this random little Franciscan monestary! it was so cool! for those of you who do not know, i really like st. francis--he's just plain awesome.

That night, the coolest thing happened! we went to get gelato at some place that we had heard was amazing (which it was) but while we were looking for it, we heard this music echoing through the streets. it was surreal almost. so we found the source, and this man named Ken Mercer was playing music just outside the Uffizi! the acoustics were incredible and his guitar and voice were just echoing off all the marble. a huge crowd had formed and he was playing great songs by oasis, simon and garfunkle, and even zeppelin. and i emailed him when we got back and he said i could post a video i took of him so here you go:

On Sunday we went ot Siena which was rustically beautiful. kinda small though. i think i would get tired of it if i was a student there. But seeing as i was only there for a day, i thoroughly enjoyed it. We got pizza and gelato (fyi i'm basically 800 pounds now) and sat in the piazza and people watched.

Monday kinda sucked only because the Uffizi and the Academy were closed. we had planned to go on monday. so we didnt get to see Michelangelo's David. bummer times. however we did see the fake, and i've seen it in real life before, so its ok. that afternoon we took a train to malpensa because we flew out really early the next morning. to get to dinner we had to walk down this dark road during which two of us made allusions to friday the 13th. that helped. one girl accidently kicked a stick and we all started screaming and blindly running toward the light maybe 100 yards away. it was absolutely hilarious, i almost died.