Siena

Early Friday morning the roommates and I (minus Ron and Mike) headed to our campus where we were suppose to meet our group at 8:30 am... So of course we showed up at 9:15am.  I can't stress enough how luck we are that we are so close to campus or we would have been left for sure.
It was a weird feeling getting on a charter bus and not seeing a bunch of lacrosse sticks and bags laying around, not to mention the great odor wafting off 20+ dudes that just played a lax game... I miss it won't lie, and my boys in Boise take on BYU today... Good luck fellas can't wait to hear all about!

The trip from Rome to Siena is around 2 1/2 hours depending if you stop or not and a great view the whole way there.  We stopped at San Gimigano, a medieval city that sits on top of huge hills that are over taken by vineyards and small crop farming (small grain and berries).  After wondering around San Gimigano we stopped at this little pizza shack and enjoyed a waffle-gelato-sandwich?  It's hard to see in this picture, I'll have to see if anyone else that came with us took a picture of just the sandwich thingy but hands down one of the best deserts I've ever ate in my life.

After a few hours we all head back to the bus and make our way to Siena, my stomach was wasn't feeling to well after blasting it with ice cream, cheese, etc... Doesn't help that I'm lactose and tolerant.  Luckily that San Gimigano is only 20 min to Siena.

We arrive shortly to Siena, as we gather into our rooms with 3 hours to kill until our group dinner (which was not the best), Matt and I walked around until we found a discounted pizza, gelato, and liquor store... so we got one of each!

The people in Siena I thought were a lot kinder towards the locals loved telling us about their heritage and history of their lives.  In my "Living in Italy" class we learned that the people in Siena live in a community or a contrada, which is represented by an animal and has it's own boundary and district identify.  It would be like if the Yankees and Red Sox were in the same state and there was nothing separating them at all.

The night life wasn't... anything special we ended up just going out to an Irish Pub with the CEA group and needles to say we all had a good time! After we left the pub, Matt and I ran into some girls that were from New York and Colorado and some how I convinced one of them to buy me a netulla pizza... (BTW today is national Nutella day) not going to lie though I wasn't a fan of the thick hazelnut pizza.

The next morning I was so tired that I couldn't stop rubbing my eyes. I went to get breakfast in my sweatshirt, lacrosse shorts, and no shoes... I found out that not wearing shoes and going around an "Italian" building is really looked down upon.  I'm just use to wearing such attire while being on lacrosse trips.  After we ate and checked out we went on a 4 hour tour of Siena, the towers, churches, buildings, etc were amazing! The only thing I had a problem with was one of the churches had a mummified head just chillin for everyone to see... Not for me...

2 weeks until Switzerland...

Here's a few of my favorite pictures from this weekend!

(this is the gross netulla pizza)