Florence and Cinque Terre

I hope you all have been enjoying the new additions.
Pictures and Map showing where my apartment is located!!!

Last weekend:

Friday we had a planned day trip to Florence to go to the Uffizi and the Academia. The rest of the weekend was free! My roommates and I and a few other decided we wanted to stay the night in Florence and then head to Cinque terre for Saturday and Sunday morning and be back for classes on Monday.

Early Friday morning we got up to head down to the bus, packed a few sandwiches for the ride and in between museums and we were off. Traveling by bus so far has been pretty uneventful. Traffic seems to be non existent. We probably stopped for maybe two red lights on the two and half hour ride!! We had a guided tour at the Uffizi, we saw paintings by… Fra Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Caravaggio to name a few. I had seen many of the paintings in my art history books before, but to be standing right there in front be of them and see the detail and brushstrokes first hand was really something. After the Uffizi we had some spare time to meander through the city, grab a bite to eat and head to the Acadamia. On our walk we saw Brunelleschi’s duomo, and Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise. The Acadamia is a very small museum and the main attraction is Michelangelo's Statue of David!!! Again to standing there right in front of it was just unreal.

After the rest of the group headed back home (Montepulciano) on the bus, we checked into out hostel, made a quick stop at the flea market, picked up a few souvenies, and went to dinner. We ate a place our hostel recommended. A buffet all you could eat dinner and a cocktail of your choosing for 8 euro. It was delicious!!!

Saturday morning we decided we wanted a head start on getting to Cinque Terre so we boarded the 6am train and we were on our way!!! Here is where our trip got interesting… or as our professor would call it ‘An Italian Moment.’ We checked train schedules before we left and had hostel information as well. When we arrived at the train station just outside Cinque Terre we were informed that there would be no train to take us home on Sunday. Soooo we enjoyed the few hours we had, which were totally worth every second of our long journey. The views are amazing and I have added Cinque Terre to my list of place I most definitely want to visit again!!! The train ride was not so bad because we still were able to see the country side and the cities along the way. We passed Carrara, city where white marble is found, The David came from there and Pisa- you can see part of the leaning tower of Pisa from the train.

We ended our trip with a taxi ride from the Chiusi train station to Montepulciano. It sure was an experience and I was holding on for dear life!

All is all it was a busy weekend, but we checked off quite a few ‘things to see in my lifetime’ and were glad to be back home in Montepulciano!!!!


This weekend we head to Rome and hopefully our adventures will be a little less hectic this time around!