Seeing' Siena

Probably my favorite place that we visited over this week long Tuscany trip was on our last day: Siena. The city is hilly with stone streets and tightly packed buildings, with a big square in the center of it in the shape of a sea shell. Typically throughout the week when we would visit a place we would do a long tour and spend a lot of time in museums or churches and then get and hour or two of free time to roam around and get lunch. This time in Siena we got six hours to ourselves so it was really cool to get to explore the city on our own and go up and down side streets. I loved the set up of the city and how it wasn't too touristy, but still was a busy place. There were a ton of shops and restaurants littering the streets so we occupied ourselves well. We got the choice to climb the tower thats in the square. The tower was very very tall and it was very very hot outside so we were all a little bit apprehensive to climb it knowing that it would be sweaty. But the views once we got to the top...oh my. Lets just say that it was definitely worth the sweat. It was so beautiful to look out and see all of Siena and the surrounding hills. The climb up the tower was easily my favorite part of our week and possibly our trip so far.

We have now returned to Grado and we are continuing our school for the next month. It is nice to return to Grado to escape the big cities, but Tuscany will be missed.

- McKenzie Boyle