| Gorgeous flowers of springtime! (Hi mom!) |
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| Erin's Florence Journal #11 4-20-02 Saturday looked to be another beautiful sunny day, as we have been enjoying for the past several days. Our plan today was to take a day trip out to Siena. Several of our fellow travelers at the hostel had told us that there wasn't all that much to see there, so we decided we'd be casual about the whole thing and just make up our own schedule. We caught a train around 10:30 and arrived around noon, by which time I was hungry for lunch. We saw another guy from our hostel whom I'd met the night before out in the courtyard of the hostel - as it turns out, he was in the class 4 years behind me at my same high school! Fancy meeting an alum this far from home! We saw him waiting for the bus into town, as we were, and decided to explore the city together. He was struggling under his heavy backpack and daypack, so I offered to help him carry the daypack as far as whatever hotel he was going to stay in. But once we got to the center of town, we found that accomodations were sparce, and recommended that he buy a phone card, set his stuff down, and call down his list of hotels rather than wandering around toting the heavy stuff. Just as we set off for the phone booths (in a piazza a few blocks away), it started pouring rain! We skirted along the sides of buildings to minimize our wetness, as I had judged it unnecessary to bring our rain coats (OOPS!). Once at the booths, we wished him luck and headed off to find lunch. We took shelter under an arched portico and found some pizza to take the edge off while letting the rain slack off. Then we went back to the city center with the intention of visiting the central market we saw on our map. Upon reaching it though, we found it closed and dark! Upon re-evaluating our options, we decided to go find Siena's Duomo (uh huh, another one). Siena is built on a hillside, so we had to trudge uphill to find the Duomo, but it was well worth it. This immense cathedral is filled with sculptures, gorgeous stained glass windows, and its famous marble floors, some of which are covered for all but 2 weeks of the year to help preserve them. We spent about 45 minutes wandering through, admiring the 13th century structure and all its treasures. In particular, I noticed they'd lined the top of the inner walls with busts of all the former popes - there were hundreds! - and the eyes were carved to look as if they were staring down on the congregation. I imagine not many children were unruly while attending services there! After the Duomo, we kept hearing thunder, and the wind had picked up, making the rain drive straight into our eyes. We pretty quickly decided we'd rather spend most of our last night in Florence relaxing, rather than going through some religious museums in Siena and getting back late, so we walked back to the train station and caught the 4:30 train back to Florence. The hostel doesn't serve dinner on weekends, so we picked up some cheap take-out pizzas and brought them back, where we could finish catching up on journals and email a few friends. While sitting there, the resident artist was again nearby, so I approached and asked if he still wanted to sketch me. He agreed, and spent the next hour sitting across from me, occasionally glancing up as I sat in the same position trying to figure out what to do without moving. The sketch came out wonderfully though, and he hinted that if we visited again, I might see my face on the walls somewhere. So if you ever go to the Ostello Archi Rossi of Firenze, look me up!!! |