I woke up today around 5:30 am because I could hear the cowbells outside. I got up and opened the window to look out and watched the cows for a bit. Then I laid back down and started to fall asleep again.  I heard a weird sound, like something was fluttering around the room. I looked up and saw a bird flying around the room; it had came in the window because there are no screens. It flew around a few times, all confused, and then it made its way back outside. It startled us and now we were up and getting ready for the day.

Greg had arranged all of the Tuscany day tours; he had even hired a bus driver to get us to our destinations. It was very cool. The bus picked us up at 9 am and we rode about an hour to Siena. When we got to Siena we met up with our tour guide and started on a walking tour.  The first thing she told us about was really interesting. It was about how Siena is made up of 17 different districts that are represented by different animals or symbols. Twice a year representatives from each district participate in a horseback race called the Palio di Siena. In the park where we started the tour she told us about the districts and then gave some of us marbles that had the colors of the district they represented. Then we put the marbles into this stone structure and watched the marbles race to the bottom. I had a marble that represented the She-Wolf district. It was entertaining but my marble did not win the race.

The tour was very informative and the city of Siena was beautiful.

We had some free time to explore and have lunch so we decided to eat lunch with Alyssa and Kevin. We ate in the Piazza del Campo at Ristorante Alla Speranza. It had a very cool look on the inside of the restaurant because it looked like catacombs. We ate outside though. I had pizza called Diavola which was basically like a spicy pepperoni and it was delicious. Don had pasta. After eating we took some pictures around the piazza. Then we had a few more minutes on the tour and we walked back to the bus.

Once we got back to the bus we were on our way to San Gimignano. The town of San Gimignano was also very beautiful. It had many medieval towers and Don told me that a lot of these towers were in the game Assassin’s Creed. So he thought seeing this place was very cool. It was very crowded and the streets were lined with shops. Everyone seemed to be going on their own way so we split off from the group. My throat was starting to hurt again, it’s so weird. I don’t know if I’m getting sick or if it’s allergies, but we decided to get some gelato and that helped. We found a little museum that had a replica of the town.

We also watched some artists who were working on some drawings.

Seeing all of the towers was very cool, although I don’t think we made it to all of them. It was like the whole town was a castle.

On our walk back to the bus we saw an overlook and of course the views were spectacular because it’s Italy.

Both Siena and San Gimignano were very cool and I would definitely recommend checking them out if you’re in the area. I think I liked Siena a bit more because it wasn’t as crowded, but the buildings and towers in San Gimignano were awesome. It’s too hard to pick which was better, just know that if it’s in Italy it’s probably awesome.

When we got back to the villa we tried to go for a swim but it was getting a little chilly so we got ready for dinner instead.  On the menu for tonight the chefs made an appetizer that was fresh spinach with ricotta topped with tomatoes.  The next dishes were a bolognase, zucchini, pork tenderoloin with mashed potatoes and then cake for dessert. We were stuffed and it was very good.

We ate outside and it was getting cold so we decided to go inside. We played some cards for a bit and then a sing along broke out and that was fun.