Day 41: Wednesday
Class field trip to Siena and San Gimignano. I woke up early to go to the train station early to get McDonald’s breakfast with Mike. The bus ride was about an hour long, and I ate my breakfast, listened to my music, and looked out the window at the beautiful Tuscany view. Our bus pulled in and we had to walk into town and find the church of San Dominico, which was easy enough for us to manage. We waited for a short while for our tour guide, then went inside for our tour. Apparently this church houses the finger and the head of Saint Catherine. Our tour guide blabbered on about Saint Catherine while I amused myself by thinking about how people will believe anything. She also told us that it was custom practice in those days to chop up the saints and share the body parts around churches. After that tour, we made our way farther into town where we encountered a celebration underway. Siena is split into seventeen neighborhoods, and every year around this time they have a horse race between all the neighborhoods. The race is on Saturday, but the celebrations were already underway, and neighborhood spirit was everywhere. We first encountered the goose district where we saw a bunch of children dressed in green running around. Everyone had green scarves on as well, and the goose flag was everywhere. Our tour guide told us they really don’t like tourists and to not interfere too much. As we made our way through the goose neighborhood and into the rhino neighborhood, our tour guide blabbered on more about random things, but all I could pay attention to was her unshaven and super hairy armpits. It was impossible not to look after you noticed. Then we had our tour of the Duomo of Siena, which had a lot of fancy floor tiles, but the thing I found the most interesting was the Bernini sculpture. I miss seeing his work everywhere like in Rome, and it was nice to look at it and know that it was unmistakably Bernini. After the tour of the Duomo we walked down to the town center, and it was very crowded in preparation for the race on Saturday, since that is where it will occur. She told us some information about it, but I was too far away to hear, and it was too hot for me to care. All I remember is standing there sweating like crazy and being the most hot I can remember being. It was horrible. Finally we were released to have lunch, and we were told to meet back at the bus at a certain time. We all set off basically in the same direction out of the crowds and back toward some restaurants we saw earlier. Me, Mike, Don, Chris, Breanne, and Sarah ended up at some place where I mistakenly ordered something I really did not like. It had a ton of onions or something (some vegetable I could not identify), and so I was still hungry after lunch. We all made it back to the bus in time to head out to San Gimignano, which we renamed Saint Jimmy John’s because we had no idea how to pronounce it. This town, strongly medieval, used to have 76 towers built by the influential families in the town, but only 14 remain. We were told by Petrie to run around for a bit and meet back at the bus station at a certain time. Everyone set out in different directions. After Mike and I wandered around the town for a little bit, us and Kari, David, and Joe decided to go to the torture museum. It was very interesting, but it made various parts of my body hurt while reading all the signs to learn how they used each of the devices. I spent most of the time cringing and make painful noises. It reminded me of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments because he observes how we feel pain even when it’s not real by imagining ourselves in that situation. After enough visual torture, we made our way back toward the bus stop to find mostly everyone already there. We got on the bus to head back to Florence, and it was already around 5. I slept most of the way back. Before we went home Mike and I bought our tickets to go to Cinque Terre at the station, then went home for dinner, and spent the rest of the night hanging out.
