Casa Vacanze Le Cellole San Gimignano

For the last couple weeks my Italian culture class has been on and off again because my professor was hospitalized with pneumonia. This week she finally resumed lectures, however we are in a different class room that is literally right across from her apartment so she doesn't have to walk a long way in the cold. And it is getting really cold in Siena right now.

This, unfortunately, means ...

... walk with us. He never barked just wanted to be pet and cuddle. When I left I was sad to say goodbye to him and he ran up behind me and jumped up and put his paws around my waist like a real hug, I almost cried. This place felt like home by the end and leaving really hurt because I'd never felt such an intense connection to one place before. Vilmo drove me to the station and I got teary as he said bye. I hope to return there someday and help pick olives again!

... one of Italy’s greatest Gothic churches, and we could see why. Like the famous Duomo in Florence, Siena’s Duomo – completed by 1215 – was quite beautiful from the outside, containing a gorgeous red, white, and green marble façade. Inside, however, the Duomo was even more spectacular; it has an exquisite patterned marble floor that contains 56 different panels depicting historical and Biblical subjects!

If the ...

... dans les jardins!

ensuite on est aller voir le vrai "David" de michealange. installer au bout d,un aller d'un petit muse au gros prix! c'est impressionant de voir sa grandeur et surtout de penser qu'il a ete realise dans un seul bloc de marbre, sculte a la main avec les outils de l'epoque. Comme dans tout bon muse, il est impossible prendre des photos!

... whatever we wanted from that room... This was at 3pm too, not like we arrived at some weird hour.
The "dorm" was just an apartment with 6 beds in 1 room, a kitchen and 4 beds in the room joined to the kitchen with no door between - check out the photos on facebook.
Glad we booked the cheaper 6 bed dorm and not the more expensive 4 bed!!!
Found out later that day they have another "dorm" downstairs with a 6 bed room and a double bed in ...

... so Chris had to help him. All of a sudden, Alec yelled for Dad to come quickly. Chris opened the bathroom door, only to find that the bathroom floor drain was overflowing with dirty bath water. He grabbed everything out of the bathroom, including Alec, and moved it into the bedroom. Melissa darted downstairs to alert the staff while Alec and Erin picked up everything near the bathroom. Before too long, the water was flooding into the first section of the bedroom. We were all ...

... caves were pretty cool...and there were a couple blankets in there so I think homeless people might spend the night there! haha! At the very top is a picnic kind of area. This was the point where Leonardo DiVinci made one of his servants jump off the cliff with his flying machine! Of course, it was basically just a hang-glider and the servant couldn't really land it, so he died. But that's the first place where the first human ...

Arrived in Florence at around 5pm and went directly to our hotel. Have an orientation trip around the city tomorrow morning then we intend to find our own way around for the day and return to our hotel by train as it is about 15 minutes out of town. Tomorrow evening we have been invited to a typical Tuscan evening at a night club which ...

... wanted to spend a few hours looking around Florence, then head out on the bus to San Gimignano, the "epitome of a Tuscan hill town" (as Rick Steves puts it). Unfortunately, since it's a Sunday, the last bus left at 6:40 PM (any other day there'd be a later bus at 7:50 PM). Since I already had a reservation in San Gimignano, and I didn't know how long it would take to get around Florence, I didn't want to risk missing the bus, so I decided just to save Florence ...

... yea, I know that's a little weird. So he will see a hot chick and say, "I bet she wants to due in the duomo"... I will just laugh and laugh for some reason. It never gets old. Then, we will be walking past a news stand, and we will hear a guy ask for "due" of something and I laugh every time. Think how many times you hear the number 2 during the day. You know its the simple things in life that are the best. Okay, so yesterday we went to the real grocery store where all the locals shop ...