Siena

Day 5

Tuesday morning, Laura left for Ireland and Nick, Chase and I headed to the train station and bought tickets to Siena.

We had no idea what we would find in Siena. The town had been recommended to me to visit so we figured there was no harm in going. The only thing was, we didn't really think it through. First off, our train tickets were actually taking us to another town from which we took an hour long bus ride to Siena. I was really glad that was the case, the train went through a lot of tunnels whereas the bus took us on a path that allowed us to really see the tuscan countryside. Plus, it was a coach bus, not a dirty city bus.

Once we arrived in Siena, we had no clue where to go. We were dropped off at the train station so we hopped on the first public transport bus we saw. It took us about 10 minutes one direction, and then reached the end of it's line. While the driver took his break I asked him if his bus would take us to the city center. Meraculusly, between my complete lack of Italian and his of English, we communicated enough for me to understand that if we stayed on long enough, we would reach the city center. So we stayed on. Then we got antsy at the first sight of what might be considered the city center and got off. Turns out we were still a few stops away but that was alright. I asked an elderly English gentleman where to go and he was able to give us directions. 

 So we finally made our way to the part of Siena that you go there to see. On the way we got to walk through lots of streets that looked like this.

Along the way I spotted this neat library.

 Eventually we made it to the center. This is the plaza at the heart of the city. Once a year the edges are covered in dirt and there is a horse race! I wish we had been there then, it seems to be a big deal. In fact, part of one of the Daniel Craig, James Bond movies was filmed here while it was set up for a race.

The best sight to see though was the city's cathedral. It was beautiful on the outside, which was enough of a reason for us not to pay to go inside. We were feeling a bit poor at that point.

That evening we ate dinner in Siena and then hopped on a train to go the last hour and a half to Florence. When we arrived in Florence we were greeted by Hayes and John, two other Hendrix guys. Hayes has been to Florence four times know so after showing us to our hostel, he gave us a nighttime tour of the city, which is now my absolute favorite way to get introduced. The gelato we were eating on the tour didn't hurt either.