Siena, Tuscany, Italy
Sunday, February 4th
This morning we awoke early to try out a local church called Mosaico Church. It was quite a small church, but we met some lovely people: a girl from Taiwan, a girl from Estonia, a guy from Columbia, and a guy from California (woah, coincidence! He was from Lake Arrowhead, which is about an hour from where I live, and I used to visit there all the time with my family. Crazy times).
Being the first Sunday of the month, most museums and gardens were free to enter today, so we decided to embark on an adventure to the Boboli gardens, which are located on the other side of the Arno River. I brought my camera, of course, and we had a lovely time exploring even though my feet were absolutely dead by the end after walking 21,000 steps in my heeled sandals (not a smart decision, I know, but only sneakers would have been better, and I refuse to commit such a fashion crime). My eyes feasted on many wonderful sights of leaves and other green things as well as views of the city and the surrounding Tuscan hillside. Me and my camera were very happy.
Here are some of my favorite photos so you too can be happy:
On our way back to Il Santo, we decided to walk around the city to find the buildings where our classes were being held so we wouldn't have to wander around lost like little clueless puppies trying to find our classes 5 minutes before they started. It was quite the task however, even more so than we realized, as Florence has an interesting way of doing the whole address situation. On any given street there are three sets of numbers (one in red, one in blue, and one in black - I think. Don't quote me on that), and google maps doesn't really know what to do with that. We managed to find most of them after a bit of searching except for one of mine, so Morgan and Ginger just threw me to the wolves (meaning I had to figure it out myself before my class haha. How dare they make me figure things out on my own).
Monday, February 5th
My first ever LdM class was Interior Design and it began at 9 am up a dark, stanky, and sketchy stairwell in Palazzo San Lorenzo. I have mixed feelings about the class as my original choice had been Construction Techniques (a clothing-making class which I was SUPER excited about), but Interior Design is cool too and counts for my design minor which I guess makes up for its lack of relation to sewing clothes. The class was 5 hours long (I know right, WOAH) with a half hour break in the middle, but it was still a bit rough to get through compared to the 1-hour GCC classes I'm used to. It helped that it wasn't all lecture though, as he gave us technical drawing exercises to do (practicing drawing rooms and buildings accurately and to scale - like a real architect! So cool.) which helped the time go by faster. My professor seems really cool and chill, and he is a professional architect so it will be interesting to learn from him. The Italian accent makes him a little harder to understand, but hey, at least the class is taught in English!
In order to not spend exorbitant amounts of money going out to eat every night, we all decided to organize a little rotational family dinner situation where each person has a designated night where they go grocery shopping and cook dinner for everyone. Tonight was Kinley's turn, and she made a "Weird Supper" (her words, not mine) - meaning some salad and sloppy joes which were not the worst thing I've ever tasted (Kinley, if you are reading this, I'm just kidding. The sloppy joes were the most magical and delightful I've ever tasted, thank you so much).
My second class of the day was Introduction to Statistics (which I successfully avoided at Grove - yay!) from 6 to 8:30 pm. It was about a 20-minute walk away from Il Santo, near Palazzo Vecchio. While my design class seemed to be a decently paced class, I could already tell from the first 5 minutes of my stats class that it was going to be WAY easier than the one at Grove. Yay, but also hopefully I don't fall asleep.
Tuesday, February 6th
My second 9 am class of the week was my Graphic Design Project class, also 5 hours long, but similarly project-based (if you couldn't tell by the title). She gave us a placement exam at the beginning to see if we were a good fit for the class which was made up of several drawing exercises, - I guess to see how your eye for design was? - then lectured about primary shapes in logos. The second half of the class we worked on the first project (designing a logo for an open-air wine bar using a bottle opener) and then we had a class excursion to Basilica di Santa Maria Novella where she talked about all of the primary shapes used in the design of the facade. It seems like that's a theme here, to explore the city as a part of the class learning experience (at least for my art and design classes anyway), which I think is totally rad.
Next was an LdM organized activity which took us to a jewelry making workshop. It was very cool to see how the guy made everything and hear about the history of the place and how he had been working there since he was a child. Apparently, they had made gold decals for Gucci, Christian Dior, and many other famous luxury brands. Super cool. He showed us his pressing machine, and even pressed our euros with a symbol of Florence design - like a fancy European hand-made form of a penny press! I even made friends with a girl that was part our group who was a Fashion Merchandising student. Maybe I actually can keep up with this whole talking-to-people thing.
Click here to see a video of the guy making a jewelry thing! Don't worry, I promise I'm not trying to hack you or anything malicious of a similar nature :).
That night at dinner, something in our conversation had sparked a mention of Studio C's lobster bisque episodes and Monty Python and the Holy Grail which Morgan and Kinley had never seen before! So, of course, we had to have a binge session (which Ginger joined for part of, then left us for her history readings) and it was lovely to see their reactions to what I would probably classify as the weirdest movie I have ever seen. Morgan and Kinley, you are now cultured. You're welcome.
Wednesday, February 7th
Today's activity was a ghost tour, where one of the LdM activity organizers took us on a walking tour around Florence and showed us some places where there were cool ancient ghost stories. I can't remember all the details, but my favorite was about the Medici family, and something related them making people burn their expensive pagan idol paintings, then someone killed a member of the Medici family in retaliation, so the Medici family killed them and everyone in their family. Some other person was beheaded but not before being made to walk down a pathway of burning coins to his death. And he was a nice dude and innocent so now he is a ghost and haunts the Palazzo Vecchio. Or something like that. But you get the idea, most of the ghost stories had something to do with people getting murdered and then they haunt the place in retaliation. At one point the lady also told us about a serial killer in Florence from like 20 years ago who killed about 40 people and the case still isn't solved. They caught some guy who they that was the serial killer and sent him to death but then realized that guy was in fact NOT the serial killer because the guy they just killed was short and dumb, and the serial killer was said to be tall and extremely intelligent (all of the murder weapons and evidence from the case disappeared mysteriously). So, there you go, some half-remembered ghost/serial killer stories purely for your entertainment (and mine).
On my way back to Il Santo, I could hear the distant drums and sounds of bugle calls were coming from afar. Ok it was actually a saxophone, but I had to do it for the ABBA reference. I'm sure you ABBA fans out there get me. I followed my ears to the Piazza della Repubblica where some street musicians were playing. There were three guys, one playing the saxophone, one playing the bass (the same guy from the other street musician encounter!), and one playing something that seemed like a mix between drums and bongos. The merry melodies coming from their instruments of joy filled my lonely heart to the brim. Ok yeah, maybe that's a little dramatic, but it really was an intensely enjoyable experience.
Click here to also be blessed with a snippet of these joyous sounds I speak of.
Today's class was Florence Sketchbook which I was the most excited for out of all my classes (and rightly so, we get to learn observational drawing skills by drawing buildings, statues, people, and gardens around Florence!). The first part of class we went out and bought all the supplies together which came out to about $95 (yikes - art is expensive), and then we returned to the classroom where the professor showed us how to correctly draw and shade an apple. This class was meant for all levels of artists, so he said the first class would be an introduction to drawing, and then we would later get to go out and sketch in Florence.
To make today just a little more interesting, there was a slight bed bug scare, but some people from the school came to check it out but didn't find anything. I guess mosquitoes have just been invading our room through the vents and eating me in my sleep. How lovely. At least we don't have to burn the mattress.
We then headed out to a fancy dinner / buffet that all LdM students had been invited to (in separate sections of course) in this super fancy and ornate palace! We had quite a lovely time dining on Italian delicacies (I have no idea what they were, but many of them involved bread somehow and tasted of olives). Again, they gave us drink cards to get wine, but while they didn't have any milk (so unfortunate, I know), I found some delectable blood orange juice to sip.
Thursday, february 8th
The last activity of the week was the secret passageways tour of Palazzo Vecchio, where one of the palace employees showed us all of the secret paths and rooms that some fake duke made when he was staying at the palace and trying to take over Florence. He apparently knew that he was doing bad stuff and would have to flee at some point so he made the secret passageways as a quick escape route, but unfortunately for him, he was found out and banished before he could use them. It was cool to explore them and learn about their history, and someone else after the fake duke added to the passageways another secret room to keep his "magical" objects for alchemy things. There were paintings all along the walls which held clues in them as to what was in the cabinet hidden behind the painting. The whole thing was shaped like a chest, as the ceiling was domed and painted. It was quite cool.
After the official tour was over they let us explore the rest of the castle. Unfortunately I had a class soon so I couldn't spend that much time there, but I did find some cool things to look at. My favorite of these was this gem:
I then headed to my Finance class, the last class of the week! And my roommate was in this class too, so it ended up being a fun time. We also made a new friend, a guy named Max from the Netherlands who sat behind us and asked for the Wi-Fi password. It was a little hard to pay attention the whole time, because the professor had a very strong Italian accent, so everything she said sounded funny. At one point, she was giving us a metaphor for the financial market, saying that we are all the little fishes in the sea and the big fishes are the bank and the government. Except when she said little fishes it sounded like "leetle feeshes", and Morgan and I couldn't help but laugh, messaging each other things like "wait who are the leetle feeshes again?? is it us? so then who are the beeg feeshes?". I would be ashamed of my lack of attention paid to the class, if it were not extremely slow-paced and teaching me things I learned like 2 years ago in principles of accounting. Hopefully the pace picks up a bit as we go along, and Morgan and I will have better things to do in class than asking who the leetle feeshes are.
Thursday nights are my night to cook, so right after class we went to get ingredients for the vegetable soup recipe I had chosen during finance class. There were so many vegetables (I would say a plethora, even) so it took a while to cut everything up. It was still a little crunchy at the end, but I think it ended up being good soup. We made garlic toast by slicing up a baguette, spreading olive oil and garlic on it, and then tossing it in the oven, but SOMEONE (cough cough Morgan) forgot that you have to take it OUT of the oven as well, so we ended up with burnt toast. We still had half a baguette left which we toasted nicely, but the burnt toast was actually a hit with the crowd and was gone within like 5 minutes as apparently it made a good biscotto (this is the last time I'm going to apologize for shattering your heart with the correct use of Italian words. You are going to have to fend for yourselves from now on) for the coffee (you see what I did there?? good, I knew you would). I guess I have to let Morgan take credit for the delicious burnt toast now that I've blamed it on her. Good job Morgan, we shall praise your name forevermore.
After we had all settled down from the feisty soup, I had the sudden urge to line dance, so I knocked on Ginger and Kinley's door and we danced the night away (aka spent like 2 hours trying to teach ourselves a line dance from a YouTube video). Twas a good challenge, and by the end I was even able to do it at 1.5 times speed! (But don't ask me to show you, it's only sustainable for about 20 seconds). In case you were curious, the line dance is called "Move", and I've included the link to the YouTube tutorial because I know you are all simply dying to learn it too. And don't worry, it didn't actually take 2 hours to learn, I was exaggerating for dramatic effect.
Friday, February 9th
Today was our first day trip out of Florence! Ginger, Morgan and I woke up at the crack of dawn for our 8 am train to Siena. Ginger brought croissants from her borderline sketchy discount food grab back to share and mine was a light, fluffy, and cream filled. I think it's safe to say that it simply divine. I will always remember this moment, staring out the train window at the green Tuscan hills whooshing by with John Mayer playing in the background while savoring a perfectly delectable cream-filled croissant. Peace and pure bliss washed over me as I read my little Greek olive romance novel whilst listening to the faint thrumming of the train in the distance.
Once we arrived in Siena, we had a delightful stroll down the historic streets, and I even found a postcard to add to my collection! (mine was artsy and cute, while Morgan’s was disturbing and slightly morbid) It was such a charming town, and we got to see a fountain enclosed in arches, the tower in the city center, and Siena’s very own duomo. There was a stunning cathedral and library inside which we took some extra time to tour and chose a later bus in order to give us a fair amount of time to appreciate the beauty. On our walk back we grabbed a panino to go, mine had tomato, mozzarella, and arugula which was pretty decent for 5 euro. We made it back just in time to catch our bus, but then got off at the wrong stop and spent 30 minutes wandering around the teeniest town you have ever seen while trying to find a place to buy a ticket for another bus. After waiting with much anticipation, our bus finally came to whisk us away to our intended destination.
This next town we arrived in was San Quirico d’Orcia, which Morgan picked out because it was home to one of the filming locations for The Gladiator. If it wasn't for her obsession with The Gladiator, we never would have had the chance to experience such beauty and charm. (Shoutout to Morgan for inspiration for the previous sentence) This town was probably the cutest little quaint village I’ve seen, and it was wonderfully calm and peaceful to stroll around. We stumbled upon an olive tree, and since the book I was reading on the train had a certain special connection to olives I thought “this is perfect! the tree is practically BEGGING me to have a taste of its olives”. So, as one does when they stumble upon a seductive olive tree in a foreign town, Ginger and I each picked an olive, said “salute”, and took a bite. This adventurous feat was immediately followed by sounds of hacking as we spewed the nasty olives from our mouths with all the strength we had left in us. I don't know who tampered with those olives, but they were probably the 6th worst thing I've ever tasted in my life.
Despite the olive incident, we had quite a lovely time in San Quirico. We found some lovely views as well as some black chickens along our 20-minute walk to the gate where we gazed upon the Gladiator house (for free!). Once we arrived, Morgan was overjoyed at the sight and she confirmed that, yes, it was everything she hoped and dreamed it would be. After a tiny bit of trespassing, Morgan calling her entire family to show them the gem she had found, and me videoing her saying a famous Gladiator line in front of the house, we trudged back to the city center.
We explored the gardens and village for a bit, and I found a beautiful hand-painted Tuscan scene which I purchased for 16 euro, but not before being yelled at for trying to take a photo of it. We stopped for some hot chocolate (the delicious, thick, almost-pudding, European kind), then moseyed our way to the bus stop. After trying and failing to find somewhere to buy tickets, we bought some online, then boarded the bus. After about 30 minutes, I checked google maps to see if we had almost arrived at our destination, but to my shock, dismay, and utter horror, I realized we had gotten on the wrong bus and were heading to Montepulciano (which is in the exact opposite direction of where we needed to go - Buonconvento). When we told the bus driver, he pulled over and said that there wasn't another bus to Buonconvento till tomorrow. Yikes. So, we got off the bus so that we wouldn’t continue going in the wrong direction, but not long after we got off, we realized that the only buses out of this rando town we ended up in went to.... yup, you guessed it. Montepulciano. The destination of the bus we had just gotten off of. Of course. And now it was starting to rain. Of course. Thankfully, there was one more bus going out tonight which was in 30 minutes, so we hopped over to a restaurant and got some bruschetta while we waited for our bus. At this point, the plan was to get on the last bus to Montepulciano, then take the train from there back to Florence.
Waiting at the bus stop, we grew more anxious each minute that passed by and the bus was not there. To combat this, we did the only possible thing imaginable in this situation: dancing in the rain! To clarify, this means that I began to dance in the rain while Morgan and Ginger watched in a strange mix of awe and horror. I did a little mix of line dancing and tap dancing until my spirits rose a little and we were all laughing. But as time grew on and the bus was STILL not here, we did the only thing left to do. We began singing worship songs. So, there we were singing Amazing Grace and Be Thou my Vision, a mix of mildly screeching and harmonizing, as we huddled under an umbrella together watching the rain fall down serenely all around us.
When our bus finally arrived, we rejoiced, happy that once again all was well… or so we thought. Upon arriving in Montepulciano, we realized that we were in fact in the WRONG Montepulciano, AKA not the one with the train we were supposed to be on in 30 minutes. Yikes. Now to find a way to the correct Montepulciano. Bus? None till tomorrow. Uber? No routes found. Taxi? We called the number on the sign and they hung up. But after asking a bus driver for the taxi number, to which he gave us the same number, we tried again and finally got a nice Egyptian dude to take us to our train for 30 euros. Not the most efficient use of our money, but at this point I was just happy to be not sleeping on the streets tonight.
Once we got on the train, all was well (other than Ginger being assaulted by a drunk man… ok maybe not quite assaulted, but I promise there was definitely a mild brawl involving drunk men and one of them got pushed onto a poor, sleeping, and unsuspecting Ginger).
Finally, we reached home at around 11:30. Just enough time to continue my Duolingo streak and then conk out. All in all, it was a fun and adventurous day that for sure grew the bond of our friendship and taught us many things (mainly not to trust Morgan with the travel planning*), but I will definitely not be doing anything tomorrow as I need a full day to recover from the catastrophe that was today.
What a fun time. Here's a few pretty pictures:
Saturday, February 10th
I slept in till about 11 am (I got 11 hours of sleep! Woah! I don't think I've gotten that much in months!), then slowly wandered around my room, somewhat resembling a sleep-deprived cat, catching up on all of the things I had pushed aside. They might not seem necessary to you, but I like to be extra organized so it's a necessity for me in order to feel at peace with the world. What are such things you need to do to feel at peace? Fascinating things like organizing my transactions in Mint, writing some blog material, organizing my travel plan spreadsheets, and so on. You know, exhilarating stuff.
Ginger and Morgan went to the Uffizi gallery (which I've been really wanting to go to) and invited me along, but after yesterday I really needed some time to just catch up and do nothing. It's my favorite thing to do and I haven't been able to do it all week!
Later in the day, Morgan and I tried to go thrifting, and yes I know exactly what you are thinking - NO, HANNAH, DON'T DO IT YOU HAVE SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR - okay maybe it was a bit bold of me to assume you are as dramatic as I am, but those of you who know me well definitely know it's not a good idea for me to go thrifting in a foreign country where I am trying to save money and don't have literally ANY extra room in my suitcase. But worry not, I knew all of these things, and the sole purpose of our thrifting expedition was to help Morgan find some actually good pants (just kiddinggg, Morgan your sense of style is fantastic. Just don't ask me about the blue camo top). And guess what?? I didn't buy anything! Aren't you proud? I know I am. While we were quite glad not to be furthering our state of brokeness, we were quite disappointed to find that true thrifting doesn't really exist in Italy, as when you search "thrift", google maps translates it to "expensive vintage". Sad. But later we found out they had flea markets on random days that are kind of like thrift stores so yay, happiness is restored (except not for me, cause I still can't buy anything :( but that's probably for the best anyway).
Click here to see a video of said expensive vintage store.
After being bombarded with sky high prices for old and withered clothes, we decided to wander in the rain, which was a fun time but we still didn't end up buying anything. Good for our wallets but not good for Morgan's closet.
On a random note, I thought it important to mention (in order for you to accurately envision the scene, of course) that Morgan and I conversed with each other in horrible British accents the entire time.
We then went to the food store, and after spending 20 minutes looking for whipped cream (but sadly with no luck - and we were at the big Conad too! What a con), got yelled at by Ginger (who had made mushroom bread pudding and a lovely orange salad) for being late to dinner. Sorry Ginger, I'll try to cry at the lack of whipped cream faster next time.
We finally made it to dinner and it was quite wonderful. Great job, Ginger.
And so concludes my tale. Check back in next week for more adventures and photography juicy enough to make your mouth water (hopefully not literally, that would be weird).
- I promise all insults are made in love and lighthearted jest, please don't come after me.
Disclaimer: Some creative liberties were taken in the writing of this blog. Details have been adjusted for the sake of poetic artistry.
P.S. please excuse my exorbitant usage of parenthesis. I acknowledge my overuse of them so you don't have to come after me> They are just so useful to insert random thoughts wherever I want! You should really try it sometime.
