Siena, San Gimignano, Boboli Gardens

I've done quite a bit since the last time I posted. First off Friday night was awful. A group of Italians decided that hanging out in front of our apartment window was going to be a great idea. So from about 1 till like 4 in the morning we could hear their whole entire conversations. It was our worst night here thus far and not to mention we had to meet the rest of our group around 9 in the morning to go to Siena.

We had about an hour or so bus ride to get to Siena. Once we got there we were split up into two groups and we started our walking tour of Siena. Our tour guide took us all around the surrounding city and explained to us how all the different parts of the city were split into 17 different neighborhoods. Each one of these neighborhoods was represented by a certain animal and each neighborhood was marked on the corners of almost all buildings with that neighborhoods crest. If you look at Austin's blog he made a list of all of them. We also walked to a square that housed the oldest bank in Italy. We then walked to the city square. It was huge. There she explained to us about the square itself as well as the Palio. The Palio is a horse race held twice a year (July 2nd and August 16th) between 10 of the neighborhoods. The fill the outside of the square with dirt and the horses race around the shell shaped square. It's known to be one of the most difficult horse races in the world because the jockeys ride barebacked. After the tour we had a little free time and a group of about 10 of us went to eat. I had stuffed pasta with ricota and spinach. As we were leaving Siena to go about another 30 minutes on the bus to San Gimignano we all decided that we were going to try to come back to see the Palio on July 2nd.

I'll be honest I had never really heard of San Gimignano, but after the 30 minute bus ride I realized that this was going to be a really cool place. We once again had another walking tour of the city, and one of the first things that our tour guide told us was that San Gimignano was famous for their towers. At one point in history they had something like 70ish towers but now there are only like 11 or 12 left. After the tour we went ate gelato at the two time world champion gelateria, Pluripremiata. It was the best gelato I've ever had. We then just walked around for about an hour then hopped back on the bus to head back to Florence. Later in the night Austin, Eli, and I invited people over to just hang out at our apartment.

On Sunday, there was a group of about 7 of us that decided to go to the Boboli Gardens. The gardens are located behind the Pitti Palace, home of the Medici family. I had never heard of them but they were beautiful. They were also huge. We spent about two hours just walking around the gardens and just tried to get lost. Then for the rest of the afternoon we just hung out at the apartment and just relaxed. It was a nice sunday afternoon.

It's crazy to think that we are starting our second week of school already and that we only got about five and half weeks left in Italy. Thats all for now I'm working on putting up pictures and hopefully they'll be up soon.

Trent