It feels like it's been so long since I wrote my first post, but really it has only been a little over a week! There is just so much going on here all the time that every day feels like it's at least two or three days in one. So let's see what has happened...
The day after I wrote my first post I went on my first trip outside of Florence, to Siena. It was a really rainy and cold, but still so exciting to finally be doing TRAVELING, since the minute you get to Europe everyone wants to know if you've been 8000 places in the one week that you've been there. And Siena was precious, so that also helped ease the pain of the rain and cold. About 30 of us went, but we ended up splitting off into smaller groups to make exploring easier, and the group I was with went to this really delicious little restaurant that my friend Stacey had been to a few years ago when she was traveling with her family in Italy. I had pici, which is a past dish that I think originated in Siena (I recognize that I am still a stupid American traveller so I always question myself about these things...) and it was sooo good. I am putting up a picture of it, in fact! Anyway, aside from consuming great food in Siena, I saw their huge brick Piazza del Campo, which was sadly completely empty because of the weather, and toured the Duomo, the Cripta (which is actually not a crypt but an old part of the Duomo that was just excavated about 10 years ago), a church where St. Catherine's HEAD is kept, the place where St. Catherine was supposedly pushed down the steps by the devil, and this outdoor stadium thing whose purpose I'm still not quite sure of (Cary? Care to explain? It is near the soccer stadium) but I heard some jazz music practice coming out of the building adjacent to it so that was pretty cool.
After Siena I went to my first discotecca, which was quite the experience! The next day was the first pretty day I’d seen since I’d been in Florence, and some friends and I went and took really great sunset pictures at the place I talked about last time Piazza de Michelangiolo. Then this past week was a blur of the final week of our pre-session. I finally got to go to the top of the Duomo in Florence, which was absolutely breathtaking, and on Thursday I had my first Italian pizza, and even better, free tiramisu for dessert. Then this weekend I went on my first real weekend trip, to Perugia and Assisi. It was such a good time!
We arrived in Perugia around 4:30 and discovered that our hotel (not a lot of hostels in the area) was RIGHT in the center of everything, so we dropped our bags and ran to take some pictures before the sun went down. We walked around and saw some really beautiful churches, although it was right around Mass time, so we didn’t get to go into the Duomo that night because we didn’t want to interrupt the service. We got a little bit lost a few times, but since the area is so small, it didn’t really matter, and probably the most exciting thing we saw was a street that had spikes in some of the walls that were supposedly used to hang the heads of criminals. That night, we had an AMAZING five-course meal (for only 13 euros each, which included everything except wine!) at this restaurant our tour book told us about, and boy were they right! We were probably really obnoxious by the end of the meal, but we were so excited because we could tell we were the only tourists in the place. 
We had planned to spend the night in Perugia because it’s a college town and we’d heard the nightlife was great, and as we were leaving the restaurant some students (and one American study abroad advisor?) took us under their wing and showed us around to some of the bars. It was about 11:30, which is early in Europe in general but apparently EXTREMELY early in Perugia, so even though there was a huge crowd outside in the piazza (near some steps where we’d heard everyone hangs out), nothing was really getting started yet. In Perugia, you can’t drink out of bottles outside, but plastic cups are okay, and my friends were all tickled to see people milling around with drinks outside. Considering that thanks to my hometown, I still don’t believe that open container laws are for real, I wasn’t quite as delighted, but it was still a really cool experience. We eventually found a pub but had a pretty early night since we knew we had tons of sight-seeing to do.
The next morning we finished our tour of Perugia. After the Duomo, we walked to a beautiful circular church that we couldn’t go inside of, but we could climb the tower next to it and we got a great view of the city. We also stumbled upon this cute little wine/chocolate/bread/jam shop and I bought some chocolate for myself, (because Perugia used to have a HUGE chocolate factory that Nestle bought out) and a souvenir for my parents! Then it was on to Assisi. We got to Assisi and waited in the cold for a few minutes to catch the bus before we decided a taxi would probably be not much more expensive. Boy, was that the best move we ever made because my friend Colleen has a fractured food, and Assisi isn’t quite as easily walkable as other Italian towns, so our driver offered to give us a grand tour of the city and gave us time to stop at every location. He even took pictures for us! The best part about that was that we got to go to this place called Ermeo delle Carceri, which is a beautiful wooded hermitage high up in mountains, as well as a place called the Rocca di Maggiore, the first of which we never could have gotten to by foot, especially fractured foot, and the second of which we wouldn’t have had time to walk to. Assisi is absolutely BEAUTIFUL, I can’t even begin to pick my favorite church although obviously seeing St. Francis’ basilica was amazing, and it reminded me of the St. Francis prayer that I know a lot of people I worked with this summer love. We didn’t get to go into the top of the Basilica because it closed early on Saturday, but the bottom was good enough for me! I think if I did have to pick my favorite church, it would be the San Rufino, where St. Francis was baptized, because it is a church so old that it was built on top of Roman ruins, which you can see through glass floors!
Now I am just relaxing until my real classes start tomorrow, including a wine tasting one! Wines of Tuscany! Miss and love everyone! Oh, and just a little shout out to Becky Wood because she LOVES blogs. Also, to my family/friends who are Catholic- please tell me if you have a confirmation saint or just one who is special to you because I would love to say a prayer for you if there is ever the opportunity in one of the millions of churches I go to. Not that everyone is not in my prayers always, but you know! Love and miss everyone!
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