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