Are you American? Can we take a picture?

I just got home from a lovely weekend in Siena! Siena is a small Tuscan city that originally rivaled Florence, but ended up not flourishing quite as much. My roommates and I made a last minute decision to book a Bed & Breakfast with my friends from Clemson. We went out Thursday night, but managed to get up bright and early on Friday to catch the 11:10 train to Siena. We didn't have a plan at all once we got there, but luckily being "Mama Tara" as my roommates have named me, I had a map, the address and phone number of our B&B, as well as my Let's Go! Italy book. I guess I take after my mother. I realized while reading my book on the train that we had to take a bus to get to the city center. After getting very lost in a strange Italian shopping mall, we found a bus that would take us into the city center. This alone was a really difficult task, since very few people in Siena speak English. I remember being worried about the language barrier before coming here, and everyone said "Don't worry, everyone in Europe speaks English!" False. Everyone in touristy European cities speaks English! Not in small Tuscan towns. We got on a very crammed bus, and got off on a random street after asking several Italians "Centro? Centro?" repeatedly. I pulled out my handy-dandy map and got us on our way towards the city center. We wandered for a while until we stumbled upon Il Campo. It is a beautiful square in the city center where a famous horse race takes place two times each year.

We were all starving, so we continued on our mission to find a restaurant for lunch. My Let's Go! book recommended a pizzeria that is "saved for the locals" and "a little hard to find" so we decided to give it a try. We got very lost on the way. Since my book gave the directions to "find a hidden staircase behind Fontebranda and go up it to the right" to find this place. Not exactly clear directions. We asked several different Italians who barely spoke a word of English and tried to follow their hand signals. Finally, as we were wandering a deserted, residential street, an adorable little Italian lady overheard us say "La Pizzeria di Nonno Mede" and stopped to help us. She was carrying groceries into her house, and rang the buzzer to call her son down. He spoke great English and gave us directions to the pizzeria that happened to be right up the street! Once we conquered one last giant hill, we found the archways he had directed us towards. We walked through archways up a small path, and found the adorable pizzeria we had been looking for. It was practically empty since it isn't tourist season, and the view was incredible. We sat outside with space heaters and a perfect view of the entire city of Siena. I ordered a white pizza with eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onions, and spinach. It was by far the best pizza I've had in Italy so far. After sharing a few slices with my roommates, I almost finished the entire pizza. Whoops! We walked up so many hills and had been traveling all morning, so we all felt we deserved a huge, carby lunch.

After eating lunch, we walked all around the city with absolutely no sense of direction. This is normally something that makes me very anxious, but my roommates are so carefree, and it forced me to let myself get lost without worrying. We went in a few different churches and encountered a surprising amount of people who were confused as to why we were there. In the middle of the winter, American girls with backpacks (me with a giant purse...I am no longer trusting of backpacks) are kind of hard to come by. We eventually found our way to the bus station where we took a bus to our Bed & Breakfast, Villa Piccola Siena. I'm writing about all of this travel as if it was quick and easy, but you should all know this is not the case. We got lost several times and had to ask for directions, which bus to get on, etc. probably 50 times in the course of our few hours in this small city. This has definitely inspired us to seriously plan our upcoming trip to Rome. 

Once we finally got to the B&B (on yet another overcrowded bus that I was convinced was going to crash) we met up with Virginia, Ashley and Mindy, our friends from Clemson! The B&B was adorable, and our room was kind of funny. It had two twin beds squished together, and a set of bunk beds. It was definitely better than a hostel, and we had our own bathroom, so no complaints here! We asked the concierge where to get dinner and headed back into the center of Siena by bus. The seven of us got dinner at an adorable, authentic restaurant where the waitress/hostess/wife of the owner barely spoke English. I got Tuscan vegetable soup and only ate about half of it since I was still so full from my gigantic pizza earlier that day. We shared a few bottles of wine and had perfect girls night in Italia. 

After dinner, we stopped back at Il Campo, the main square the find gelato. This is only after getting very lost in back roads where nothing was open. It was only 9:30 pm, and the entire city seemed to shut down, besides Il Campo. It was definitely a lot different than Florence. While eating our gelato sitting in the square, three Asian girls came up to us and asked if they could take a picture of us. Are we famous? After several minutes of confused, broken English, asking "wait...take it of you? or of us? you want to be in it with us?" they eventually all sat down between us and took a picture with us. We chatted with them for a while and learned that they were all English majors from South Korea who were in Italy for "holiday." We're assuming they were so excited to talk to us so they could practice their English, but this was the third time today we had been approached by other English-speakers. Earlier in the day, on two different occasions, groups of college students studying in Siena overheard us speaking and came running up to us to chat. I guess Americans are hard to come by in the less touristy parts of Tuscany. We thought that maybe one of us looked similar to a celebrity and people were just confused. 

After our encounter with our new South Korean friends, we headed back to the hotel to get a good nights sleep. There isn't much nightlife in Siena anyway, and we were all exhausted from being on our feet all day. We got up very early the next morning to make it to breakfast at the B&B on time. My roommates and I got up earlier than the others, and smuggled a ridiculous amount of baked goods into my giant purse. Croissants, muffins, apples, nutela packets, the works. We are all starting to realize how ridiculously expensive Europe is, so we needed to eat a cheap (and by cheap, I mean completely free) lunch. We headed back into Siena to walk around a little more, and ended up wandering into the outskirts. We eventually ended up at what we are assuming is the city wall. 

After visiting Il Campo one last time and meeting up with the rest of the girls to give them directions to our favorite pizzeria, we headed home to Florence. It was yet another complicated process to find the right bus to take us to the train station. Luckily, it was free, since after our second time buying a 1 euro bus ticket, we noticed that no one validates their tickets, and we rode for free the rest of the weekend. We all fell asleep on the train back to Florence (after eating our stolen lunches) and were so happy to take off our boots and lay in bed for the rest of the afternoon.

Now onto a full week of classes, then leaving for ROMA on Friday morning! So excited to see more of this amazing country.