Travel Diary: Siena, Italy

For those of you who may not be aware…I’m currently in Europe! I’m here studying abroad for the summer. I’ll be taking 5 classes—1 in Siena, Italy and 4 in Paris, France. In between classes I’ll be doing as much galavanting throughout Europe as I possibly can! I brought my camera along with me for the ride so that I can share all sites with you guys.

Here are just a few pics from my first week in Siena…

Check out the street where I’m staying and my scenery as I walk to class each day. I love how the buildings are so colorful in Siena!

Also, I thought this little water fountain was really neat. Usually you see things like that and they’re just for looking at. But residents here actually stop and fill their water bottles up in this fountain. For some reason that really struck me as neat.

This is me on the upper/outdoor level of the Palazzo Pubblico, which is one of the main buildings in Siena (it’s actually a palace!) and where their government conducts some of it’s official business. It’s also where everyone in Siena gets married! (Click here to see a picture of the wedding hall.)

The view from the Pubblico is AMAZING! I promise you these pictures do NOT do it justice! You have to see it for yourself!

You’ll notice that there are no food pictures…yet. To be honest, I’ve found the food here to be largely disappointing. I had in my mind amazing pasta and mindblowing pizza and have yet to really find either of those things. (Although I did find one place that serves amazing spaghetti alla carbonara and ravioli de pecorino!) Siena is a really small, traditional town whose staple foods are Crostini (toast topped with olive paste, chicken-liver pâté, wild-boar pâté), pici (thick, hand-rolled spaghetti) and the classic Tuscan bread-and-tomato salad, panzanella. None of those things are high up on my list of things I’m dying to eat. So I’m still on the hunt for amazing eats. In the meantime, there’s always gelato! You can’t go wrong with gelato!

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