So The Weekend Excursions Begin...

     Yesterday we went on a tour of the famous underground "bottini", which are a series of underground passageways 30 feet below the streets of Siena.  They facilitated the supply of water to medieval Siena and they still provide water to several notable fountains in the city today.  The bottini took about 100 years to construct, since workers literally hacked away at the stone with pickaxes!  It was quite remarkable to see, and it is completely off-limits to tourists and the public, so I felt very lucky that we were given a private tour.  Check out the pictures below (click on each to see a larger view)

     This weekend I'm going to Florence!!!  A group of my fellow IES students and I are taking a direct bus to Florence (it takes about 75 minutes to get there) on Saturday bright and early so that we can have all day to explore and then go home, because the round-trip bus fare is much cheaper than staying overnight, even in a hostel.  I plan on seeing the Uffizi gallery, Il Duomo, Piazza della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio, Ponte Vecchio, the Galleria dell' Academia (where Michelangelo's David is kept!), and perhaps some other assorted sights.  It is so nice to be able to hop on a bus or train and be in some of the most historic and famous places in Italy!  It's still so surreal that I'm here!  Along with planning our trip to Florence, all of us have been musing about what places in Italy and Europe we want to visit and the list is growing.  Travel is one of the main reasons that I decided to study abroad in Europe, and so I intend on going to as many places as I can!  Stay tuned for pictures from Florence; I will be taking a multitude of them!