Bella Toscana

So I stole the title from the sequel to Under the Tuscan Sun except I used correct Italian grammar (the title of the sequel is Bella Tuscany and is definitely worth a read).

This trip was an IES sponsored trip which was awesome because all I bought all weekend was lunch. Yay! Also, it was led by one of my most favorite people at IES, Walter! Yay! We had classes off on Thursday as an end of midterms treat so we left Thursday morning and came back Saturday night.

THURSDAY

We started with a four hour bus ride. Joy. However, we arrived in Siena and had a guided tour. This time our guide spoke pretty good English so it didn't take as long to have the translations. He was also a lot less long winded than the guide we had in Aosta. We were given breaks a few times as well which was nice. We saw the Piazza del Campo, the political center of Siena where the hold the big horse race Siena has every year for which province is more adored by the Virgin Mary. We took a break here and ate some very good gelato while sitting in the square.

We also saw the church with St. Catherine's head (yes, you can really see the head. I believe my cousin Anna was really intrigued by this when she went there) which is San Domenico and the outside of the Duomo. We then climbed up this wall that was supposed to be the facade for a new church when Siena decided to try and expand their Duomo into the largest cathedral in the world (beating St. Peter's in Rome). However, the plague hit and nothing was finished. However, now you can climb it (for a price which IES covered for us, yay!) and see some beautiful views of Siena and the Tuscan countryside that surrounds it.

Siena is a small town so we then headed and checked into the hotel and relaxed until dinner.

FRIDAY

We woke up, had some breakfast, and headed to Montalcino where there's a castle/fortress we went to. We went up on the walls of the fortress and then tasted wine in the enoteca (wine club) in the castle. This wasn't covered by IES but there was a deal that we got to try a brunello that Montalcino is known for and it was only one euro. We then had time to explore the town of Montalcino and get some lunch. We basically saw some churches (the Duomo was closed for lunch when we got there but we hung out in the little park in front of it and took pictures of the beautiful fall colors).

After Montalcino we headed to a monastery nearby and got to hear the monks there doing their Gregorian chant. We actually then heard from a monk there who is originally from LA but just moved out to the monastery.

We left Montalcino and went to Pienza which is a small Renaissance town that was designed by Piccolomini! (a reference to a Blue Lake song for those that don't know). Turns out Piccolomini became Pope Pius II. We got to see a beautiful Tuscan sunset (so many Under the Tuscan Sun references...) and wander the town before going back to our hotel in Siena and having dinner.

SATURDAY

We packed the bus up (we jokingly said "upload" because Walter had misspoke and said "download" the bus instead of unload earlier on the trip) and went to Arezzo for the day. We went into San Francesco and saw these very famous frescos that I enjoyed. Other than that we just wandered the town. Saw the Duomo which had also just closed for lunch, had lunch with the RAs and Walter because we ran into them, and then got on a bus back to Milan.

It was a wonderful trip and Tuscany was so beautiful. I've come back to gray, cloudy Milan (we're supposed to have rain for four days in a row this week) and back to classes. I will be spending next weekend in Milan but am very excited because my host sister from St. Gallen, Switzerland during my 2007 European tour with the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp International Southern Winds is coming with her other sister to visit me. Yay!