We flew out on a Thursday morning, though the day beforehand was our studio mid-crit, so Tuesday night pretty much no one slept. Under the power of caffeine and adrenaline we managed to get through Wednesday, however our good friend Brendan thought it would be a good idea to go out and party that night. I didn't think anything of it, I went back to apartments and passed out around 8:30 after I burned one oven-pizza by taking an extra 20-minute nap. The next morning, we all get up expecting about an hour to get to the airport via subway/bus. Wrong. We go two stops north on the subway, and hear over the speaker "Alexanderplatz - bus service to Tegel Airport." So the group of 8 that we had gets off and makes our way over to the bus, thinking it will be fast. Wrong. It stopped about every block, and we got to the airport fifteen minutes late to meet our professor. He looked really concerned, and I said that "we're sorry, we didn't know how long the bus would take." Then he said, "well, where is everyone else?" Go figure we were the first ones to get there. So everyone else trickles about 10 minutes later, but no Brendan. He ended up going out and staying with another one of friends in Berlin that night, had to run around in the morning and got to the airport about five minutes too late to check-in. He ended up paying about $750 out of his pocket for a later flight that day.
So we landed in Rome Fuimicino (I don't know why Florence...) and hopped on the bus to Siena. This trip really killed about three days just by travel, I wish it was planned alot better. By the time we got to Siena on Thursday night, it was getting dark and we just missed the supposedly beautiful Tuscan sunset. Checked into the hotel, and then went for a night-time city walk.
We made our way through the city over to Piazza del Campo, the shell-shaped public square where they hold the horse races. Our Urban Studies talk commenced there for the night and we stayed there to finally eat dinner. The food was... okay, you would think a place with an amazing location would have something good. At least the wine was good.
We wandered the Campo and then over to the Siena cathedral, which, like every other major cathedral in Europe when it's not summer, was undergoing renovations. So there was a big crane right next to the church, I don't know if that's as bad or better than having half the building covered in scaffolding. It was getting late by this time and Siena doesn't really scream 'party place' so we headed back to the hotel to watch Quantum of Solace and pass out.
The next day we checked out of the hotel and wandered back to the Campo to work on the Urban Studies assignment, sketching the way the space works and whatnot. We had a decent amount of time, so I decided that going up the Torre del Mangia was a worthwhile trip.
You may think, "wow that looks like the tower in Provincetown!" when really, this predates that tower by about 600 years. So its the Pilgrim Monument that looks like the Torre del Mangia, not the other way around. Needless to say, the climb up this one was a little tight, I'm 6'2" and parts of the stairway had maybe a 4'6" clearance height. Nevertheless, the view of Tuscany at the top was spectacular.
We headed over to go inside the Siena Cathedral, which was of course very big and awe-inspiring as most old European cathedrals are to Americans. One thing I really liked was how it was decorated with the stripes of Siena, black and white. I thought about going up the bell tower there, but in the end it pretty much would have been the same view there as was on the Mangia, so I saved my 6 euro and got me some pizza for lunch and hopped on the bus for somewhere.
So the mystery Tuscan town turned out to be Pienza, which nobody knew anything about. Another small commune of medieval and renaissance buildings, a central square and an awesome view out over the hills, kind of typical, but still worth it for many reasons. 
While wandering the side streets, we came across a friendly cat, and it distracted us for a good 10 minutes at least. 
We only spent maybe two hours or so there, but it was a good stop. Amazing views are usually worth it. 
After that we hopped on the bus for another 3+ hours to Rome. Bus time is good time, you can catch up on some sleep, even if it is pretty uncomfortable. Rome is a marathon in itself, so I'll save that for part three.
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