park of monsters and siena struggles

Christina and I in the mouth of the ogre

This weekend I headed to Bomarzo with my program. It is a town about 2 hours away. We headed there to see the Park of Monsters, which I had never even heard of. This park is a part of The Villa of Wonders, which was built in 1552 by Pirro Ligorio. Pirro Ligorio also built completed the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Rome after the death of Michelangelo and built Villa d'Este in Tivoli.

Hanging out in the vineyards

Sunset in the vineyard

Even though we didn't really know what it was while headed there and were basically just going for the free trip and lunch, it was actually very interesting. It was this beautiful span of land that had all these random HUGE sculptures of monsters. Apparently when they were made they were also painted many colors so they looked real. We spent the morning walking around on a tour of the park, with a tour guide that not a single of us could understand. After this we headed to a villa about an hour away from Bomarzo to eat lunch. We had a huge feast of fresh bruschetta, vegetables, pasta, meatballs, potatoes, oranges, and dessert. YUM. Then we had free time for about 2 hours to explore the vineyard. After walking around the grounds, everyone passed out in the grass in the sun for a late afternoon nap. It was such a relaxing, much needed day. After we woke up and watched the sun start to set, we headed back to on the journey to Rome.

Lido di Ostia is quickly becoming my favorite place

On Saturday Christina, Sally, and I woke up and headed back to Lido di Ostia, one of Rome's beaches. It was about 67 that day, but we braved it and went out in our bathing suits anyway. It was a beautiful day out with not a cloud in sight. The beach town was a lot more bustling that day since it was such a pretty Saturday. It was filled with clowns and street acts, and the restaurants were actually open this time. We headed down to the beach and were able to lay out for about two hours before it got chilly. After that we headed for some gelato, yum. I found the BEST gelato right on the beach - SNICKERS flavor! Mom, you'd LOVE it. It was absolutely amazing. I'm so glad there's not a place that sells it closer to us, because I'd be eating it every single day. We went out for dinner at a German place that night, then headed back to Rome. Once we got back, we were all so exhausted that we almost immediately passed out. Which was good, because Christina and I had a long day ahead of us.

On Sunday morning, I woke up around 6am (eek) to get ready to head to Siena with Christina. This was somewhere I had never been before, but I had heard how beautiful it was so I jumped at the opportunity to go. We booked the 8am train out of Rome so we would be in Siena by around 11:30 and have the full day there. However, we booked our bus tickets at 10pm Saturday night. Since CEA was already closed and didn't provide us with printers at our apartments, we had no way to print our bus tickets. We both saved copies on our iPhones hoping they'd let us use confirmation numbers and electronic copies to board the bus.

Side street in Siena

Once we got to the bus, the bus driver only spoke italian. Christina tried to translate, but it didn't work out so well and he said absolutely not to letting us on with our electronic copies. The office for our bus line was closed, so we ran from office to office at the bus station trying to get anyone to let us print our tickets. Unfortunately, this failed as well. The line to get on the bus got shorter and shorter and we started to realize there was a good chance that we weren't making it to Siena after all. We walked up to the bus to try one last time to beg with the driver in broken italian, and met some girls that were boarding the bus that spoke both Italian and English. We explained the situation to one of them, and she talked to the bus driver. After 20 minutes of arguing, FINALLY the bus driver let us on the bus. We were off!!!

After the 2 hour bus drive, we got into Siena. As we drove past the Duomo and belltower, we started to get really excited for the day and that we had finally made it. We weren't exactly sure which stop we were supposed to get off at, so we kept waiting for the sign that matched our tickets. Then we started driving back down the very large hill of Siena......

Belltower and Il Campo

After about 15 minutes of driving downhill away from Siena we saw our bus stop. At the very bottom of the hill. We got out and looked around, and realized we had no idea where to even start walking to get back up to Siena. Christina saw a hotel, so we decided to try our luck asking them. We went in and the nicest guy helped us at the front desk. He gave us a map and showed us a small road that we could take that took us up to an escalator that took you to the top of the hill. I swear this escalator is the smartest thing I've seen in Italy so far.

The sign for the goose contrada

We finally got to the top of the very long escalator, and we were right by the Duomo! We spent the day seeing all the sights - eating lunch in Il Campo in front of the belltower, the Duomo and climbing to the Panorama of the city, the house and sanctuary of Santa Caterina, the fortress, and ending the day with delicious gelato back in Il Campo. Il Campo is the main square where the horse races are held every July and August. Siena is divided into different contradas. Each contrada is represented by an animal - we saw a wolf, a rhino, a fox, and a goose. I'm not sure how many there are, but the people of Siena are extremely proud of their contrada. Everywhere you go people had flags and pictures of their animals on their windows. It was so cool. Anyway, in July and August the contradas all compete against each other in a huge horse race in Il Campo where basically anything goes. Apparently it's completely wild because there are almost no rules. I would LOVE to come back one day and be able to see that in person.

Duomo

View of the Panorama from the ground

The Duomo is stunning, and so much different that its rival Duomo in Florence. This Duomo, although much smaller, was much more of a gothic style of architecture which I like a lot more. I actually preferred the Siena Duomo over the Florence Duomo. It was interesting seeing the new part vs. the old part. Siena tried to build more on their duomo to expand it where the current duomo would be the smaller part. This was a huge project, and they had just started it when a plague hit Siena and whipped out half their population. This paused the project, and it was never restarted. There are just a couple walls and one building for the new part. They have made the one building into a museum, and you can climb one of the walls to the panorama. Christina's friend told us to make sure to do that, and I'm so glad we did. This wall was so tall and there were two different levels you could go on. We climbed to the top (Dad, you would've hated the narrow staircase) and the views were AMAZING. You could see the entire medieval town framed by the hills in the background. Pictures can't even show how beautiful it was (click on them to see them zoomed in!!).

View of Il Campo from the Duomo

View from the panorama

View of the old Duomo from the new

View of the city from the Fortress

After the duomo, we headed back down the stairs and went to the Fortress. We tried to go in, but apparently the fortress was doing its job because we couldn't even find the entrance. We walked in a full circle around the building before walking back past a soccer game to the main part of town to get gelato and relax in Il Campo before heading back to the bus. It was an awesome day taking in the absolute beauty of Siena. I personally think Siena is one of the most underrated cities - I now consider it an absolute must-see of Italy. I've never seen somewhere so beautiful in my life. The entire town was beautiful with its medieval buildings, then you'd turn the corner and get your breath taken away by magnificent views of the rolling Tuscan hills. It was absolutely incredible.

Gelato :) YUM

After a long day of climbing hills and getting blisters, we headed back down the mountain to our bus stop. We went there with confidence that we weren't going to have any problems, considering the bus driver printed our tickets for us when we go to Siena. We even got there 10 minutes early for our 4pm bus. So we waited... and the bus was a little late, but Italians are normally late so it was fine... then we waited... and kept waiting... and 45 minutes later we realized the bus definitely wasn't coming. Neither of us had phones so we were absolute dumbstruck on what to do. I ended up going across the street to a pizza place and showing them my ticket, to which he responded that we had been waiting at the stop FROM Rome, and the stop TO Rome is on the other side of the road..... behind a dumpster... so we missed our bus. I swear, nothing in Italy comes easy. We then used his phone to call the bus company, and they said we needed to come to the train station to talk to them about it. We had no idea how to even get to the train station and the owner of the pizzeria said it was a couple kilometers away (because we know what that means and all..), so we took a taxi there. The bus company told us that there was a bus at 6:30, but it was full and the next one was at 8pm. We begged for the 6:30 bus, and he started to look it up, but when he asked for our tickets he realized we were the ones causing all the trouble that morning on the bus. After this, he refused to help us and told us our only option was the 8pm bus. Because of midterms this week, we knew we needed to get back to Rome earlier. We ended up taking the 6:30 train back instead, having to pay extra for that. Then on top of that, during our connection the train to Rome got delayed 30 minutes. We didn't end up getting back to Rome until around 11:30, 5 hours later than originally planned. Like I said before, don't EVER rub the dog on the St. Charles' Bridge in Prague... it'll haunt you forever. Luckily Siena was totally worth it.