Voyages in Siena.

Had probably the best day of the trip so far today. Dragon and I put a team together and travelled to Siena, which is apparently the land of tiny wooden figurines and comedia masks. More on that in a bit.

The plan was originally to travel in a large group, but that plan was shot when most of us returned from Pisa around 4am last night and decided that we'd rather sleep as late as possible.

Late ended up being 8am.

Ended up catching a 10am bus to Siena, arrived there around 1pm. Wandered around for quite a bit until we found the city square. Once there, all of us looked up at the tallest point of Siena, a massive church tower that overlooked the entire town. Clearly, we needed to climb it.

7 Euros and a hell of a lot of steps later, we were at the top of the Tower of Sauron (Lord of the Rings reference, not the real name, for folks keeping score), overlooking the entire country side below. We were high enough up that you could see the curve of the Earth. Well, that's exaggerating, but it was a shitload of sight to see.

Once we'd descended the mighty edifice, we continued wandering in search of a fabled wine museum that the rest of the group had come to Siena to see and explore. We never ended up spending any real time with that group beyond clambering into them in the middle of the street and I'm strangely alright with that.

We had lunch at a really nice place that we picked on impulse. Decided to stop being cautious and try new things. Rabbit stew is delicious, I've found. Left the restaurant two failed credit cards, a desperate run by the people trying to pay with cards to an ATM, and around two-and-a-half hours later.

Continued in search of the wine museum, only to discover that we'd been not only travelling in a loop through Siena, but that we were travelling the wrong direction entirely.

Saw a stand full of merchandise that we checked out, which turned into a horror show when we saw the Nazi paraphenalia/scalpel/dental tool section of the table. We promptly left after that, trying not to laugh for fear of Hitler's Dentist's superior skills with a throwing scalpel.

Finally reached the wine museum, only to discover a carnival going on outside. More on that later.

Free admission. Free tasting. Remember this.

The museum itself was the basement of a fortress. They have fortresses here, how insane is that? So in the basement of a clearly-WWII-refitted brick and mortar fortress, we came across the wine taster professional guy, complete with gold spittoon around his neck.

First, we sampled a sweet wine, one of his favorites apparently. Really good stuff.

Then, we decided to go for a red and try what he called pepper wine. We smelled it, sipped it, and became immediately flabbergasted by how good it was. He smirked and calmly told us that we were sampling a €25,000 bottle of wine.

For free.

We factored it out and realized that the sips we were had €1000 each in our glasses.

We quickly left for fear of being discovered as dirty Americans and captured in order to claim our now priceless urine for resale.

Then to the carnival outside. Shittiest haunted house ever for €2,50, featuring a One-Titted Demon Bitch (Tex's name for her, not mine.) and the plastic they use in crappy car washes to separate the different "attractions" inside. After that, we took two rides on the big spinning swing thing that they have at carnivals, a ride I've never been on due to my hatred of being slingshot to my death (apparently null-and-void as a fear in a foreign country). Two rides later, I was so completely happy I failed to notice all the Eurotrash boy and girls, hair gelled in horrible coifs and spikes, tiny barely-formed hands clutching cigaretted like pros, staring us down as the filthy Americanos we were. Time to go.

Perhaps one man's Eurotrash is another man's Eurotreasure. Not today though.

Having an hour or two before our bus back to Florence left, we decided to sit down and have a last drink for the road. I ha my first beer. Apparently, it was a big experience, as there was much bottle and glass clinging and clanging. It was way better than all the chuck wine we've been getting. Clearly.

And then, we departed. Busride back to Florence, and a perfect nightcap with my first ever all-the-way-through viewing of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was entirely excellent.

So now it is 1:12am and I am completely tired. On to sleep.

In which we detour in history and flashback to Pisa.

FLASHBACK TO YESTERDAY

Pisa was interesting. Large group of people all got together to explore Pisa for the day. Took a train there in the afternoon after class.

Got there and immediately became really lost. Walked about for a long period of time and finally located the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which, indeed, is in Pisa, is a Tower, and which is on quite a slant. The whole area's actually a big sinkhole, unbeknownst to architects in the 1100s (The fools should have just used their ground-penetrating radar to detect weak spots in the ground below...stupid 1100ers...), and it shows. The Tower's on a hell of a slant at this point and some day shall fall over to its doom.

Had dinner at a nice restaurant. Some of the more slutty actor girls managed to charm their way to free food (like usual), but the table I was at took the high road and actually accepted that our waiter was a human being, not just an animal to be toyed with (I'm not bitter about this happening everywhere we go, no siree...).

Ended up having to take a 1:12 am bus, so we chilled out at a nearby bar/restaurant/grill (their sign, not my wordplay). Realized that I hate wine (red, at least) and that I'm apparently more of a liquor guy (something and tonic, STAT!).

Eventually got the bus home, sat next to an actor girl unable to stop talking (pretty bad when you have a massive headache), taxied back to base, planned for the epic Siena trip, and finally went to bed at 4am.

All-in-all, not too bad.

I'll leave you readers with this, a question from one of the many conversations I and my "bus buddy" had on the trip back: If you were to die this instant and had to pick one memory in which to live for the rest of eternity, what would it be?

It's hot. Like Africa hot. Like desert hot. It's just...so HOT.

Yesterday was a lazy day, methinks. Spent most of the day inside. Finished the first go at my outline. Sent it along to Dragon. He has yet to let me know his thoughts, despite sitting right next to me at this very moment.

Got gelato. Tried the mint this time. Was excellent, as all things edible here are.

Been watching LOST the last two nights. We started with the first two (technically the two-hour pilot), last night was three and four. The fourth episode ("Walkabout") has probably become one of my favorite pieces of television. I highly recommend it.

Giorgio sandwich for lunch again. He's a golden god of sandwichery. Salami today. Dragon asked Giorgio what his favorite was and got an anchovy sandwich and it was actually quite good from the bite I tried out of it. Really sharp flavor is the only way I can describe it. Not sure I could deal with a whole sandwich of it. Tomorrow, I think I'll either try the tuna or the bacon fat and beans, just because the second one sounds so horrifyingly delicious that it may eventually become impossible to resist.

No real city exploration, but there may be more tonight due to class not being held til the afternoon tomorrow.

And then I got busy...

Sorry for the gigantic time gap in posts. Got absorbed in script outlining work. Show I'm working is (I think) an unbad idea. I actually like something I've written for once.

Script professor remains incredibly cool.

Florence remains wicked hot. Had a rainy day over the weekend, but it was the sort of humid rain of death that only makes the day feel that much worse.

A group of the folks here have started going to a place up the hill called Bar Lidia, potentially the greatest sandwich shop in the history of food. Giorgio, the older fellow who runs the shop, understands basic English (tomato, lettuce, thank you, sandwich, toasted) and is a beautiful, beautiful man who crafts masterworks of sandwichery, even when he doesn't make anything near what you'd intended.

Went for a long walk around the city a few days back with the same group of folks. Five hours of walking through Florence. It was wonderful in that "we're exploring!" sort of sense.

I'll do my best to commence regular posting from this point on, as I'm already forgetting what I've been doing here and that simply will not do.