Siena Day 1

We got up fairly early the next morning and headed to Siena. It was a short train ride, but then we had to figure out how to get from the station to the actual city. The station is a bit of walk from the city, which is up in the hills of Tuscany. We decided to be cheap and walk the 2 or so miles up to the city. Quite possibly one of the worst decisions we have made the whole trip. Sure the walk was beautiful, but I have never sweated nor walked up such steep streets in my life.

Super steep hill!

Not to mention, our hotel was a bit hard to find, but once we finally arrived, we were both soaking wet with sweat and disgusting. Such a romantic honeymoon right? Lucky for us, this hotel had abnormally early check in times, and we were able to head to our room and shower. Siena is your quintessential Italian town. Absolutely stunning with stucco buildings, colorful window shutters, and laundry strung up outside.





After we showered and looked like presentable human beings again, we headed over to Siena’s Duomo. They also have a Duomo cathedral, that looks very similar from the outside to the one in Florence. Once you head inside, it is a different story. It has a breathtakingly beautiful interior. I have to say that it was much more impressive than the Duomo in Florence on the inside.



Next, we headed to the Il Campo area of town, which is a beautiful piazza.

We decided to grab some lunch and head back to the hotel. Our hotel had a beautiful courtyard where we ate and read. Our exhaustion from traveling all morning quickly caught up with us though, and we headed for a nap. This time we decided to set an alarm so that we did not sleep the day away. When we got up, we decided to look around for dinner, and ate at a place recommended in the guide that we were using. It was a wonderful small restaurant that we finally found. I had the vegetable risotto, and Will had the pasta with bolognese sauce, and we split a bottle of wine. The food was amazing!

The street with our restaurant

After dinner, we decided to walk around for awhile, and see Siena at night. It was such a beautiful place with the street lights on, and people out walking around, enjoying the night air.


We walked down to the Il Campo again, which was packed with people out enjoying the views in the Piazza. Will found a cigar store, and purchased what they claimed was a Cuban cigar. Will later told me that it tasted nothing like a Cuban, but was good none the less. We sat out on the patio while Will smoked, enjoying the night sounds and views of Siena!

Carrie

Florence Day 2

Unfortunately, Italy has not been as great with the internet as France, so it is not as easy to blog here. We woke up in Florence and had breakfast at our hotel. Sadly, there were no croissants as we were lucky enough to have while we were in France, just some quite hard rolls. We planned on visiting the Duomo first, but forgot that it was Sunday and there were different hours for visiting. Instead we headed over to the markets and searched again for Will a bag. He was lucky and found a great messenger bag that was exactly what he was looking for! It is a gorgeous leather bag that he got a great deal on. Will got a great price when he threatened that the bag was too expensive. After we bought the bag, we headed back to the hotel to drop it off, and decided to be lazy and grab a bottle of wine and sandwiches and sit on our terrace for awhile. Yes I am sure that there were some things that we missed seeing in Florence, but sometimes you just have to take a break and relax. We have certainly learned that lesson on this trip, and realized that when we are tired, we just need to relax some and it is ok if we don’t see every single thing there is to see. While we were up on the terrace, we realized that there were people touring the Duomo again and decided to see if it was open in the afternoon. I was really excited that it was, so we went and toured around a bit inside, though I have to say that the inside is not nearly as spectacular as the outside of the structure. It is much more plain and subdued on the inside, so it was almost a bit of a letdown in that sense, but the sheer size of it, took over any disappointment of interior decoration.

Yes, I know that we did not go to the Uffitzi museum, but the line was so extraordinarily long and it was so hot, that we decided to pass, and assume that we will come back to Florence at some point in our lives. As we were walking around town, we went in a few jewelry shops, and I found a gorgeous pair of gold and pearl earrings. They have a very vintage style, even though they are new. We looked at them, and left to think about them, but only got halfway down the street when Will and I realized that they needed to come home with us! I knew I would regret not buying them, so we went back to the store to purchase them. It was definitely a fun day because we both found something great to buy in Florence. Afterwards, we walked around trying to figure out where to eat, but decided to just got back to the Yellow Bar again because we were getting tired of walking around and around. We savored our last evening in Florence and enjoyed the terrace with the sun setting and the light coming up on the Duomo after dinner. Not going to lie, we also had some more Chianti, and enjoyed our evening that much more! While we were sitting there, we watched a strange parade go by that we are pretty sure was just for the tourists with people dressed in Florentine style with trumpets and drums. We found it to be a bit hokey, but enjoyed watching people in the street hurrying to get a great photo. Quite funny! We knew we had to get up early the next morning to head to Siena, so we headed to bed loving our time in Florence.

Carrie

Past Blogs

We are going to post our past blogs from when we did not have internet access. I had already written them, it was just a matter of posting.

Carrie

In Rome

Hello, hello. We are in Rome with no internet yet again. Not even McDonalds internet is connecting this time. So we apologize for a lack of blogging in Italy. We have them all written, just need to post them when we have a connection with our computer. Right now we are sitting at an internet cafe minus the cafe part. We leave Rome tomorrow early in the morning to head back. We have loved this city, and walked our feet off while we have been here. Can't wait to see everyone when we get back!

Carrie and Will

In Sorrento

We are in Sorrento and headed to Rome tomorrow. We have not had internet at any of the past hotels, so we have been unable to update our blog, but we have so many amazing photos to post when we have a chance! Hopefully Rome will have internet at our hotel, or at least in a close location.

Carrie and Will

Florence Day 1

Once we arrived in town, we headed over to our hotel. Unfortunately, we were not able to check in yet, so we left our bags and began to explore the city. Our hotel is right beside the Duomo, so we began by walking over to it. It is really breathtaking; beautiful and enormous, but we waited to go inside because the line was so long.



We then made our way over to the Ponte Vecchio bridge over the Arno river. It had really stunning views of Florence, and we were able to take some great pictures.



We continued to wonder through the city and came upon some of the markets. These all have basically the same things, leather bags and scarves, but the smell of leather was so great that we had to explore. Florence is known for its leather goods and its gold jewelry, so we set upon a search to find Will a leather messenger bag that he could keep for years to come. We decided to just look, so he could figure out exactly what type of bag he wanted. It is really fun being in the markets because everyone is trying to sell something, and they are all willing to negotiate the price so that you buy from them. After looking, we decided to get some lunch because we were starving. We found a great little place behind the markets, and had our first Italian meals. Will swears it was the best lasagna he has ever eaten in his life, and my homemade pasta with pesto was delicious. You really can’t beat homemade pasta; it is the perfect thing to eat every time. After lunch, it was time to head to the hotel so we could check in. By this time, we were both about to fall over from a lack of sleep the night before. We were given our key, and made our way up to our room. Upon opening the door, we discovered that we had to use the shared bathroom at the end of the hall, because our room only had a sink and a shower. When we opened our doors onto the terrace, any thought of a shared facility melted away. The Duomo was right in front of us, one of the most amazing views I have ever had in my life. To be able to sit outside amongst such a beautiful piece of architecture was really unbelievable.

The view from our terrace!

The excitement was short lived, because we were both so tired. We were obviously exhausted, because we slept for 3 hours. It was the bells of the Duomo that woke us up. Though that sounds like it would be beautiful and romantic, it really felt like someone ringing enormous church bells right beside your head (we are that close!) and frankly I don’t know if I have ever woken up so quickly in my life. Quite the scare! After the bells finally stopped ringing, we decided to get ready for dinner. We found this great little place called the Yellow Bar, and had a tasty dinner, of yet again pasta for me and pizza for Will with an ice cream dessert that we shared. You just can’t turn the pasta down, especially when they make it themselves! Once we finished dinner, we headed back to the room where we sat outside on the terrace and watched the sun set and the lights on the city take over. The Duomo is beautiful at night, and it was wonderful to have the sun finally set, and a break from the heat. What an end to a wonderful first day in Italy!

Carrie and Will

Lyon Day 2

Lyon is really a beautiful city, especially wonderful if you have a lot of money I am sure. Even a simple café is really expensive, and not to mention all the designer clothing stores. I could certainly spend some money in this town! Lyon is the banking capital of France, so many people who work here can certainly afford the high prices. We started off the morning by sleeping in. We needed to sleep, and there was not an overwhelming amount of things to see and do in Lyon. After grabbing a “cappuccino” from downstairs (pretty sure it was just espresso with whipped cream on top) we took the subway up to the cathedral on the top of the mountain that separates the two sides of Lyon. The views from the top were beautiful. We could see all of downtown Lyon, and the surrounding hills.
A panoramic Will put together of downtown Lyon

When we walked inside the cathedral we were blown away; the intense detail everywhere you looked was amazing. Although I have to say that the cathedral walked a fine line between being beautiful and tacky. There was a lot of gold throughout the entire sanctuary, and amazing mosaic murals covering the walls. Though the sheer size was amazing, the detail and size of the mosaic murals was astounding.

A mosaic wall detail

After touring the cathedral, as well as the other sanctuary below the main one, we walked to the other side of the mountain to check out the views of the other side of town. We came upon the remains of an old Roman amphitheater with beautiful views of town. After that, we headed back into town to walk around for a bit. Our train was not leaving until 7:30 to head out of Lyon, so we had lots of time to kill before we had to head to the station.
A city squareA hotel in Lyon...a bit nicer than our Best Western

We ate a late lunch at a small quick serve pasta place, and lounged around for a bit there to avoid having to go into the rain that had moved in. Luckily, it did not rain for too long, and we had a very American moment and went to Starbucks. This was only the second time we have gone because it is quite expensive, but sometimes one just needs a big, huge coffee, and apparently the only place in France that serves this is Starbucks. We sat by the window, and enjoyed some great people watching…one of our favorite things to do in Europe! Finally we decided to head back to the hotel and get our stuff and go to the rail station. We took a regular train to Dijon, France, and there we got on a sleeping car to head to Florence. Once in Dijon, our next train was an hour late, and after we got on, we realized that they had double booked our compartment. Finally they found us a room with 4 others. The compartments have six beds in each, three bunks on each side. Luckily, everyone was very nice that we stayed with, so it was an enjoyable trip, minus the whole sleeping on a train part. Will was of course able to sleep well, whereas I did quite a bit of tossing and turning, but managed a few hours I think. We woke up around 6:30 the next morning, and the ride into Florence through the mountains was gorgeous. I have failed to mention that some of the best scenery we see is on our train rides, especially the field after field of sunflowers through France. We made it to Florence, and set out to find our hotel and begin our first full day in Italy!

Carrie and Will