Hey everybody. Soo looks like I made it halfway through the semester blogging and then just got way to busy! So sorry about that! I am currently still living in Florence, in a hostel by myself. I am here till June 1st, when I am going to work for a family on a farm near Ljubljana, Slovenia (through workaway.info - check it out) till June 18th, when I fly to Oslo, Norway, spend the night there, then go to Haugesund, Norway to stay with my aunt's friend and her family. I'll be there till July 4th, when I go to Andalucia, Spain, to work for a family there till July 19th. I then come back to Firenze and depart from here to go back to Dallas on July 21st. Whew!
I'm really thankful that I am getting to stay in Europe so long, and would appreciate your prayers as I am traveling by myself! But anyways, I guess now I am going to try to remember what I did the weeks after my last blog post from spring break.
Friday, April 1st - Siena & San Gimignano
This day I was actually planning on going to the beach at Viareggio with Haley H., and her friends Carla and Kelly. Woke up early to catch the trail there, walked in the coldish weather to the train station in beach clothes and got lots of weird looks, and then it turns out there was a train strike and we couldn't go. Boo. But it turned out alright, because I rushed home, changed, and then made it just in time to go with SAI to their Siena trip I had heard about! It was free and they had extra room on the bus so it worked out great.
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| My terrible picture of the Duomo of Siena |
We got to Siena late morning, my friend Amanda and my roommates Alyssa and Andrea were also on the trip which was nice. We had a short tour of the town which basically consists of the Duomo, the main square, and little streets.
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| Duomo |
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Piazza del Campo. They have a huge horse race in this main piazza every year
After the tour, Amanda and I wanted to explore Siena because we had only seen like two places there. But then for lunch we had a wine tasting that lasted like 2 hours, and then we had to leave which was super lame. The wine tasting was pretty good but I was bummed that I spent more time inside learning about wine than seeing Siena. Anyways, then we were supposed to go to Montepulciano or some town that I hadn't seen before, but for some reason we instead went to San Gimignano, where I had already been. We were there a total of like 30 minutes and then had to leave. I love San Gimignano though, such a nice little town. Soo yeah overall it was a nice trip, but I kinda wish I had done it on my own. I love how diverse Italy is and all the little day trips you can take to those little towns. |
Saturday, April 2nd - Verona
Me, Amanda, Eliza, and Haley P. went to Verona for the day! We took the train there and got there around noonish, wandered around, had lunch, and just explored the rest of the afternoon. Verona is a beautiful town that is neither too big nor too small, perfect for a day trip.
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| Rome isn't the only place with a Coliseum! |
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Main Piazza where we had lunch
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| Love the colorful Verona buildings w/ the flowers on the balconies. |
If you didn't already know, Verona is probably most famous for being the place where supposedly Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet took place. The main attraction is Juliet's house, with the balcony where she said the famous lines, a statue of Juliet where if you hold her breast it gives you good luck or something, and a wall where lovers write their names. If you have seen Letters to Juliet, however, there's not reallyyy a place to write actual letters to Juliet. I think you can like email her or something, and there's a room above one of the shops around there that has some framed letters to Juliet, but it's nothing like the movie.
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| The wall |
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Juliet's house & the famous balcony (bottom right)
After we saw Juliet's house we wandered around to the other side of the river, saw two beautiful churches, relaxed in a nice park, and wandered to the top of a hill for a fabulous view of the whole city. |
It was getting to be sunset, and we decided it was about time to head back to Florence. The train station was a bit of a walk from the center of Verona, so we wandered around trying to find wi-fi, and eventually had a hotel receptionist look up train times for us. But then... problem. We had missed the last train out of Verona and there wasn't one till 4:00 AM! Soo we were basically homeless in Verona for the night! We went and saw a movie (No Strings Attached) in Italian, without subtitles, and then wandered around Verona for as long as we could, it was actually pretty boring and we were getting soo tired. We went to the train station and tried to find where to buy tickets but couldn't, it was pretty freaky being there at 3:00 in the morning actually. But our train finally came and we could buy tickets on the train. It was actually a sleeper train coming from Germany and we finally made it back to Firenze around 6 or 7 in the morning. Crazy! Lesson learned: Check the train times going AND coming when you are traveling somewhere!
Ok I'll hopefully blog again soooon! Thanks for reading, ciao!
