The first day we stopped at many of the small hill towns on the way to Siena. They were gorgeous little medieval towns with amazing views of the rolling hills of Tuscany. They were so clean and quaint with very few people around surrounded by acres and acres of farmland. We arrived in Siena that night and got to stay in another pretty nice hotel. A couple of the boys got pretty sick which I felt really bad about and I think it was from either the lunch or dinner that we ate even though no one else really got sick. Some of us went out in Siena that night, but it was really quiet and we just ordered some dessert and a bottle of wine at the only open restaurant in the center of town. One of the coolest parts of Siena is that to get to the city from out hotel you have to take about a million escalators because it is up so high.
The third day we headed to Florence. It was the other big city in Italy that we have been to and I really loved it. We walked around the city visiting the cathedral, the baptistry, and the Medici palace. The walks we went on focused a lot on the families of Florence and the architectural styles of the period. It was really interesting and the weather was decent for the most part although it has still be pretty cold. I even had to borrow a sweatshirt from my friend Steve who is like double my size by the way.
One of our teachers brought us to this really cool store that was like an herbologist's shop but was run by the nuns of Santa Maria Novella. It was so old fashioned and cool and they sold soaps and perfumes and other really cool stuff. I definitely want to go back if I can with my dad. From there we left for the train station (at least those of us who were heading back to Rome!). The train ride back was pretty quick and we just got back to Rome and settled in and hung out. It was kind of nice just being there with a few of us.
The next morning I went to the train station to pink Dan up. It was the best day ever. When he came out of baggage check I was dying with anticipation. We rode back to Trastevere on the train together and dropped his stuff of at the apartment. We then went out to do some sight seeing and to find some lunch. We got paninis near the Pantheon and enjoyed the beautiful weather by sitting on the steps of the fountain to eat. I then gave him my own little tour of the Pantheon and then walked around to see some other sights. Dan was getting pretty tired so we headed back and made some plans to go to the soccer game that was that night. We figured out how to get there and got to the stadium just in time (Julien came with us) but we found out that we couldn't buy tickets at the stadium for the game so we didn't get to go. :( Instead we headed over to the Vatican since it's sort of near the stadium and got to see it at night!
We then went to Scholar's, our favorite bar, because we wanted to show it to Dan. We got some snacks and so beers and just hung out. Dan got really tired and we had to wake up early to go to Venice in the morning, so we went home and to sleep.
Really early Sunday we woke up and caught a train to Venice. It took about 5 hours, and once we got there we got on a water taxi and rode it to St. Mark's Square which is where our hotel was. It was the cutest little guest house that had been redone really modern, but our room was soo tiny. It wasn't bad, just quaint. I really liked it. We set our stuff down and went exploring. We saw St. Mark's Square and just walked around the city through all the winding roads and canals and over bridges. We found the Rialto bridge that was so cool. It's a bridge that has stores built into it. We found a place to grab pizza for lunch, and explored some more, then headed back to the hotel to rest and get ready for dinner. We went out to a place that our hotel keeper recommended and it was so delicious. We did all the traditional stuff, including getting limoncello after dinner. I had so much fun doing all of this stuff with Dan. We celebrated the Valentine's Day that we had missed with this dinner. It was so nice.
The next morning we got up and had dinner at the hotel. We then had to make our way over to the train station so this time we walked and got ourselves lost and took about 2 hours to find it. We had wanted to explore and kill time so it was actually pretty fun. We rode the train back and got back in time to grab some dinner at Florida Pizza which is my favorite place in Rome to get pizza, and headed over to the studio to watch the Italian movie, which was Life is Beautiful. I LOVE that movie. Now we are back at the apartment just relaxing.
Alright, better go!
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