June 11, 2011 "Much have I traveld in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen..." - John Keats

We are running out of food (and toilet paper) in the apartment again. We have pasta, 3 eggs, nutella and cookies.
We left for Siena at 9.

When we got to Siena we walked for a while until we got to the Bascillica of Saint Catherine.

It was a pretty chapel except that it had her finger and actual head it in. That was gross and disturbing.

While we were waiting outside for the group, a bunch of High Schoolers got into a big water fight. There were water balloons and water bottles everywhere. Oh to be young.
We then walked past the Baptistery to the Duomo which is one of the biggest in the world.

It was so beautiful. There were scenes carved into the marble floor an some of Michelangelo’s original work.

There were also ancient pieces of sheet music.

We then opted to climb to the top of one of the tallest buildings to see the view of Siena. This is one of the coolest things I have done so far. First we had to wait in line for a while and then only 8 could go up at a time. We had to climb a ton of tight marble staircases to get to the top. We were getting dizzy. Passing people who were coming down was very interesting and I got a little too comfortable with some Italians. But once we got to the top, the view was to die for.

You could see more miles. There was a perfect view of the Duomo and the main square.
We then made our way to the main square or Piazza del Campo as it is called.

It is one of the top 10 tourist destination spots but you would never know it because it wasn’t horribly packed like Rome and Florence were. The piazza is in the shape of a scallop with 7 sections that used to represent the 7 heads of state.

We were given free time so we went to eat. We found a pizza place that sells pizza by the slice. I got a piece with mushroom and sausage and Bacardi to drink. We sat out on the scallop and ate.
Then we went shopping until it was time to meet up. Our professor bought us gelato again. I went for something completely different and I got pink grapefruit and lemon. It was so tart and sour. The pink grapefruit actually tasted like I was biting into the fruit.
This was our last trip with the school. As we pulled into Perugia we heard our professor say “Great trip, regazzi” for the last time. It was so sad. This is going by so fast.