Siena, Socks and String

[Ignore the numbers in parenthesis, pictures will be posted eventually...]

Today we went to Siena with our tour guide from Arezzo, Giavonni.  He’s our favorite tour guide.  He spent the first ten minutes of our bus ride talking about the Japanese tourists, and every time someone that works at a church tells him in Italian we can’t take pictures, he translates it to, “Oh, did I mention you can’t take any pictures, no flash, no breathing, no laughing, no enjoyment of any kind.”  Then he goes on with our tour. 

[613]  View of a part of the lovely city!

Today was our first day of rain.  It has been drizzling the last couple days, but today it rained until water starting dripping through my umbrella, and the wind flipped my umbrella inside out about 13 times.  We went to a lot of places today, but I was more focused on not slipping on the excessive amount of marble rather than where we were going or what I was taking pictures of.  The pictures I did take don’t do the city justice.  From what we did see, I can imagine that Siena is absolutely breathtaking when the sun is shining.  Too bad the one day we did come, everyone was hiding under clouds or umbrellas and our free time was during the siesta. 

[629] Lots of rain and lots of umbrellas.

We went to a few churches, Piazza del Campo where the Palio horse race is held, saw where Saint Catherine of Siena spent most of her time, also saw her head and a finger, and went past way too many shops with way too little time to stop.

[620] Room where Saint Catherine spent most of her time, with a memorial and frescoes dedicated to her.

Giavonni doesn’t care if we take pictures as long as there is no flash.  When we were in this little bitty room, however, people were filing out and some guy came in and yelled at us in Italian.  I quickly slid my camera in my pocket and walked out like I didn’t know what he was saying, but some people behind me got yelled at and “shoo’d” out of the room.  Kelsey didn’t even get to go inside. 

After that unknown place we went to another unknown place, where we looked at lots of rooms of frescoes and restorations and stuff.

[641] View from the tower of some place where Parliament was held and there were a lot of frescoes. 

Anyways, all this is making me bored, so we’ll get back to my laundry situation.  I ended up making a clothesline in studio, where I hung all my shirts up and they dried within a few hours.  What was left of my socks and undies that were still wet I took to the Laundromat (which is adorable, the washers are covered in flowers) and paid 2 euro for 15 minutes of drying time.  Unfortunately, all the socks I own are either wool or fuzzy, so I had to throw them in with another girl’s laundry for 15 minutes more.  Then I hiked up a steep hill with my laundry bag, which is still difficult after three weeks of Olympic training.

[Laundry, Laundry 2]

Spill of the day yesterday was not food, but rather my fork flying at me and almost cutting my trachea open.  I have no recollection of how the fork got to its mid-air position, but it landed in my lap and I was not injured.  Close call. 

Spending today with Giavonni led to an addition to the list of words Italians can’t pronounce.

Cinnamon (SEE-no-mone).

Government (Go-VERNA-ment). 

Developed (dee-vull-upped, say very quickly). 

Heartbeats (Herpes).

As for what is happening in studio, some people have been getting bored in our small little town during the rain, and have decided to build a tensile archway in the middle of our studio out of string.  Boredom has turned it into a massive trail of yarn going up the stairs by our studio and I imagine they will be heading into the hallway soon.  Thank goodness for no fire code in Italy!  Unfortunately this is bringing unwanted traffic into our secret little studio, aka art majors.  If I haven’t mentioned it yet, our studio is at the end of a hallway down a flight of stairs all by itself.  We’ve been here three weeks and just today the other schools realized we were down here.  They’ve also realized they can steal our internet.

This weekend we have a LOT planned!  We’ve booked hostels and trains and made our itinerary for a jam packed expensive weekend!  First we’re going to the Ferrari Museum to buy some cars, and then we’re driving the cars to Milan.  When we get to Milan we’re checking into our lovely hostel.  On Saturday we’re going to do the tourist things, look at some churches and art galleries and some famous stuff.  Then we’ll go shopping and to dinner.  The boys are going to a soccer game, but we didn’t get tickets so we’re debating between shopping ORRRRRR……..going to an OPERA!  We found out that if we go an hour before show time we can get the left over tickets 25% off, and the nosebleeds are only 12 euro!  So we’ll see how that goes.  Then on Sunday we’re hopefully taking a train to Lake Como, where Star Wars and Casino Royale were filmed.  It will be the first garden we go to, and I am very excited!  We will be very close to Switzerland, so I’ll holler to the yodelers for you all.

I think this is getting too long.

Cara Marie