Rustica Progenie Apartments San Gimignano

... I have to walk across town to get to class now. One good thing that came out of this, however, is that because we were so close to her apartment she decided to invite the entire class over for a tea party after class today. Not sure why or how she came up with this idea, but I thought it was really cute.

This was the first genuine Italian apartment inhabited by genuine Italians that I ...

... was a plate with huge slices of mozzarella and tomato with basil leaves, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with black pepper. A bottle of this olive oil stood on the table the color of kermit the frog. Fresh tuscan bread, ******* the outside and airy white on the inside, sat in a basket before me. Vilmo poured me a full glass of wine as purple as grape juice from an unlabeled bottle. He informed me that this wine was made from several farmers in the ...

11.28.09 A Much Nicer Day Trip To Siena

[First, a shout-out to our dear dad Perce, who is recovering from surgery today in Sydney. We love you and are sending you and Jan our thoughts and prayers!]

Murray and I are feeling much better today, thank you very much, so we are headed out today to attempt another day trip from Florence that, hopefully, will be an improvement over yesterday's quicky sicky day trip to Pisa!

After ...

... 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 ...

... spent the night at a hotel in a small village called Pieve de Santa Luca, about 25 kilometres from the coast, and also Pisa. We enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere and poolside so mich that we decided to spend our last night in Italy here too. We took a drive to nearby Cecina on the coast for lunch and spent the rest of the day relaxing at our hotel, in the tiny village in the middle of the beautiful Tuscan scenery.

My first expression of Florence was "what an ugly place for being the birth of Renaissance art!" I got off the train station and wandered the streets for a good hour and a half looking for a specific hostel. None of the streets are showing in my map and the map at the station is the same map I am looking at. I walked back to the station and asked where I was (I am getting really good at communicating in foreign countries by the way). Seems as though I got ...

... shops would be a bit nicer, and less smelly. So that's what lines it these days. From the end of the bridge it was a quick hop to the Uffizi gallery and the rather large queue, I hadn't listened to the advise about buying a ticket in advance and stupidly ended up spending almost 2 hours queuing, thankfully not in the sun though, that would have just been torture. Then I spent about an hour looking at all the pictures and marble heads. Ok, so it was a ...

... telling you, it's one impressive place. I'm not sure why, but it must have been free today since I didn't have to pay to get in (just go through metal detector and bag x-ray). While not as large as Versailles, in my opinion it is every bit as impressive (even more so in the interiors), and the best part was it has 1/10th the crowds (per area). Inside, room after room of incredibly ornate rooms full of paintings, fancy furniture, chandeliers, and large colorful ...

... so that night we get to Central Park. It is right next to Meccano, the other club we to went last Saturday. There were two lines to get in. One was long with people waiting and the other kinda short. A large group of Italian guys were walking up going into the short line. I guess it was for reservations or something. We didn't get there before 1:00am so we were going to have to pay €10 Euro each to get in. I saw a small window of opportunity and I said, "Guys, I'll meet you ...