Siena

I took the train to Siena to meet up with Ken. Since I left extra early (I had nothing better to do) I decided to try a new way to get to Termini. It was pretty fun. I hopped on the first bus that came to my stop, which happened to be the 44. I got on and instead of going all the way to Piazza Venezia like I was planning, I got off on Viale Trastevere and took the tram until the end of the line. When I got off the tram, an express bus to Termini was waiting for me. I was pretty impressed with myself. I found a shortcut! It only took me half an hour to leave my apartment and get to Termini instead of the usual 45 minutes or an hour. I think I'll go that route again sometime. It's fun to play with public transportation especially since I don't have it in Wooster or Lynchburg. I'll enjoy it while I can.

I got to Termini about an hour early so I had to wait around until my train was listed. Once it was finally on the board, I had no idea where the track was. It wasn't a usual track number like 28 or 7 it was 2 Piazzale Est. I had no idea what that was. So I aimlessly wandered around until I finally found the train. A lady asked me (in Italian) if I knew where it was and I felt so proud of myself for being able to give her directions. By the time I got on the train, it was PACKED. Thankfully I got to sit in a little pull-down corner seat by the window. I was comfortable and glad I didn't have to stand the whole way.

I got to Siena before Ken so I started my book (The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, in case anyone is wondering. It's REALLY good after the first few chapters). Apparently Ken's bus ran into traffic so he was late. While I was waiting though, a girl came up to me and started ranting in rapid Italian about how frustrated she is and asked if I knew who she could talk to about some student travel something. I had no idea what student travel thing she was talking about so she just wandered away. I was impressed I could even figure out what she was talking about.

FINALLY Ken got there and we went on a search for our campsite. Of course we got lost because the directions I got online were confusing. We finally figured it out and checked it. It turns out that it wasn't really a campsite after all. It was more of a mobile home park. We got the key to our mobile home and went to check it out. IT WAS SO NICE! It was one little room with two beds but we had a fridge, our own bathroom, and air conditioning/heat. We were quite impressed.

After we got settled we walked into town, wandered around, and had dinner. We were planning on having a cheap dinner but of course that didn't happen. The menu looked so good and inexpensive that we got carried away ordering stuff. Ken ordered vegetable soup and I had beef spleen on toasted bread for an appetizer and then I ordered gnochi and Ken had some boar meat pasta. Then, we still weren't done with our over-priced wine so we decided to split a dessert. It was some kind of walnut/almond cake. It was delicious so the price of our meal was justified.

After dinner we walked around central Siena catching up until about midnight when we realized we were almost too tired to walk back to the campsite. We slept very well that night.

The next day we went back into town. Our first order of business, as usual, was to find a kebab place. I don't know why but Italy is filled with kebab places. After wandering and wandering we  finally decided to walk to a grocery store and just buy some bread and cheese for lunch. Of course, after walking all the way there we found a row of kebab places. We had a good lunch, bought some scarves, and went back to the Duomo to take a tour.

For 10 euros we bought a pass to 5 of the main attractions. We spent our afternoon going through the Duomo, a museum, the baptistery, the crypt, and another church.  It was very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. Ken decided that after this semester he should change his major to Basilica studies since you can't go anywhere without entering a church. We'll definitely be experts by the time we return to the US.

Later in the afternoon we were quickly fading. We sat and ate gelato for a while in Il Campo and then we found a little bar where we had a beer while we rested for our return trip. It was quite relaxing.

We went back to the train station so Ken could buy his return bus ticket. Unfortunately it was sold out so he had to buy a 60 euro fast-train ticket back to Milan. He was not happy about this at all but it's better than being stranded in Siena, alone, with nowhere to stay. I think he learned the necessity of buying round trip tickets.

Since then I've been doing pretty well (despite the travel alert). I made an old nun happy today by giving her my seat on the bus. It just made my day. She was so cute and kept thanking me and thanking me. If I don't remember anything about my time in Rome, I'll definitely remember her.