Florence, a city for lovers... and American's apparently

For the past two days, I have been in Florence. I particularly liked this city, the scale of the city was much larger than Venice, but they views were spectacular. Beautiful, multo bene! We had a day and a half in this city, we walked a lot but I took a small break yesterday evening. Instead of hiking to see a sunset from a similar view I had already seen, I did homework in the hotel room just to steal a chance to rest, get a little Michelle time, and get more of my essay assignments done so I can so throw the book away and stop carrying it.... 5 more to.

Kababs galore, they are quite delicious and I have officially eaten 5 in 3 weeks, each city holds a different version of this delicious food and I am looking forward to meeting every one of them. We have come to realize that Americans like Florence. A lot of that we saw on the street were obviously Americans and stood out just as much as we do in their ugg boots and north face jackets and unintelligent talk. I certainly hope we don't come off like that, but I'm sure 42 people walking around with matching backpacks, cameras and looking around with inquisitive eyes tend to draw some attention. People tend to stop and stare... a lot. We are quite a sight to see.

We left early the next morning (today) and headed towards Rome but stopped in a few cities on the way. The lucky cities are San Gimignano and Siena. We only stopped to sketch at the first and I took out the charcoals because I was feeling lazy and got a couple sketches that are quite striking if I do say so myself... We stayed in Siena for a few hours and spent the afternoon in a very famous plaza called Piazza de Campo where historic horse races still take place. The plaza is similar to a shape of an orange slice, half circle, what have you. It slopes down towards the middle of the orange slice with a drain. Luckily its a Saturday and a beautiful day at that, so we got to see a lot of activity with old ladies and babies and small children chasing after the pigeons that were incredibly demanding and got waaaay to close for my comfort. Someone sitting next to me hit one with his sketchbook.

Then we all hopped back on our coach and road the rest of the day to Rome where I am currently sitting at this moment! We had an amazing dinner, compliments of Ryan Young's parents (fellow traveler who's parents have joined us for Italy and Greece) spicy pasta may be my new favorite thing, and I had vegetables...I don't get my hands on those much lately. I am very excited for what the next 3 days have in store for me. Tomorrow we are going to the ruins and then have the day on our own so there will be a nice update in store, especially since we have free wi-fi but the internet is a little weak so that is why there are no pictures in this post. Even though there are perfect pictures to portray what I am talking about, you all will have to wait until a later date when all of my classmates are not clogging up the internet and I can get some decent service. So hopefully there will be some imagery to go along with all of your imaginations, I'm doing my best. Until tomorrow or the next day, or the next... Ciao!