This morning, I came back from my trip to Italy.
It was an interesting, frustrating, tiring, majesticly beautiful, and bad luck weekend.
We started off by taking a train to Florence, where Hemang and I talked
to this half French/Italian guy who was very cool; later joined by a group
of female travellers looking to explore Italy. I couldn’t sleep that well,
(surprisingly enough) so I went to the dining car and wrote a letter to Terri, who I began to miss very much. When we left the train, we jumped to a bus to Siena.
Siena was exquisite! The hotel right in front of the bus stop was “The
Jolly Hotel”, where Hemang and I dropped our bags and showered. We then
had lunch in the Piazza while marvelling at the wonderful view. We began
exploring the “Piazza” (an open area in about the size of a city block) and
“Domo” and walked to the top of the Piazza’s Great tower for what is called
the best view of Italy. I started to carve my initials in the bell at the
top, when a German couple asked me if I thought that the bell needed that.
Shocked, amazed and embarrassed, I stopped. (If you see the letter “T” in
the hanging part of the bell in this area, that’s ME!) When we got down,
we decided to join the people lying down in the piazza and took a nap on
the bricks. Rested, we went back to the hotel to prepare ourselves for sundown.
At 7PM in Siena, something amazing happens. Everyone comes out to walk
on the major rode. EVERYONE! And then they come out dressed in their most
fashionable attire. Men dressed in suits. Women dressed as fashion models.
It was like a mile long runway with everyone showing off. Truly amazing!
Hemang and I stuck around till about 1AM chatting and having some of the
best gelato (Ice Cream) in the world!
For the next day, we were going to explore San Gimangino, another small
hill town in Italy. That city was on top of a hill, which offered a truly
majestic site. We did some shopping, eating and exploring. That’s where
it all fell apart. See: “All I want is to go to Paris…is that so hard?“
It’s now 1AM, and I’m at Nortel, waiting for Hemang to finish his stuff,
so we can go to bed. We’re waiting for someone else to finish up over here,
so that he can drive us back because the train workers are on strike and
there aren’t that many trains going to Montparnarse.
Ciao!