Siena and Pisa

So, this past weekend a good friend from school came down to Rome to visit! It was so exciting to see a familiar face in this crazy (but amazing) city. She flew down on Friday and we set out for a quick-paced 5 hour tour of the monuments in Rome. It was so exhausting! I'm glad she was able to see everything, but man! By the time we got to our hostel for the night (my apartment doesn't allow me to have guests overnight) we were dead-tired, and easily went to bed well before midnight. The next morning we took a train to Siena, where we stayed Saturday night. Despite the usual--we got to the Rome train station super early and then were at the wrong gate and ended up full out sprinting to our train, then the train decided it would take its sweet time pulling out so we were 15 minutes to the station where we need to change trains (with supposedly 10 minutes to spare), and then when we finally got into Siena, we couldn't find where the hostel was, and ended up walking in both directions away from the train station before giving up and taking a 5 minutes taxi--Siena was amazing.
Our hostel was this little house run by an older woman who was so cute. She left us a little bag with our key and notes on where our room/batheroom were since she wasn't able to meet us. The shower was interesting...with just an expandable curtain standing between me and the rest of the bathroom itself--quite an experience. What made the hosel even better was that it was literally right next to one of the many "doors" into the historic part of Siena, which is where we spent out entire time. Since we had most of the day left when we got in, we immediately walked over to the historical section and started seeing the sights. We ended up getting a pass to let us into the Cathedral, Baptistery, the Oratory, an amazing Panoramic view of Siena, and the Crypts. It was so much fun! The Cathedral was stunning. Despite having just toured St. Peter's Basilica the day before, I was still astounded by the interior of the Church, and almost liked it a bit more. The next day, we decided to just walk around in the morning and hope we found something a bit new-and we did. We ended up finding the oldest fountain in Siena, and a whole other church that wasn't part of our original tour! What made the morning better, of course, was the amazing breakfast the woman who ran the hostel made us! There was so much food, we almost didn't know what to do with ourselves.


Church in Florence



At midday, we took a train over to Pisa, and AS USUAL got lost. I feel like my time in Italy can only be defined as that: being perpetually lost. But oh well. We finally found the tower, after taking the longest route there possible, and of course took some pictures. We didn't have much time in between our trains, so we headed back to the train station and headed in our separate directions. It was such a great weekend though! It was also a nice break from the reality of midterms.



Ceiling in St. Peters Basilica



Ohhh midterms. They are thankfully done now, but it was a long two weeks. I finally worked with pottery at the excavation on Tuesday! For my shift, I worked on cleaning marble and travertine fragments (which are most definitely NOT easy to clean with so many crevices and punctures) and then began working on pottery fragments, which will mostly be my task for the semester. The archaeologists, and the other people who work at the site are so friendly! Communicating, we use a mix of English and Italian, since we both a know a little of the other language, so it works out pretty well. I go back today and I'm looking forward to it. The site keeps my mind off school or travel stress or any of that, and it's fun!

Well I'm going to have to jet--after work I'm leaving for Milan to start my fall break! I'm visiting Prague, Vienna, London, and then ending in Edinburgh with another friend from school. So expect amazing stories when I get back (and probably multiple posts)!

Ciao!