Cleverly Titled Blog Entry

So I had quite the wonderful weekend. On Friday I stayed in Perugia to go on a museum tour with a few people from my home group. It was pretty awesome. We went inside the Duomo (which is regularly voted one of the ugliest churches in Italy because of the exterior) to see, get this, the alleged wedding ring of the Virgin Mary. I couldn't take a picture of it, but still. I'm a little skeptical as to whether or not it was the ring. I'm guessing no.

Then we went into the big art gallery in Perugia. It's 30 rooms and has a lot of art, but it's not as frequented as museums like the Uffizi in Firenze. So we were like the only ones there. Lots of cool stuff, lots of Saint Francis, lots of Mary and baby Jesus, the only painting I've actually seen of Saint Bonaventure, lots of other saints that I didn't know. The usual. It took us forever to get through it.

We stopped in another place to see some frescoes by one of the more famous artists to come from Perugia, cleverly named Perugino. The Perugian. He was a pretty good artist, not gonna lie.

Next we headed down to Saint Peter's church, but it was closed at the time so we walked through the Medieval Garden, which is gonna look amazing in springtime. For now it was cold and windy, but the garden was really pretty.

This is a really old olive tree and it's supposed to represent the world. There were more cool views of the valley and such, but the wind and cold soon made us retreat.

I did this out of order, but we went to Saint Peter's church after we went for lunch, but whatever. The church is really beautiful with lots of frescoes and elaborate work on the ceilings. The nice guy working there let us into the basement, where we found (I get less and less surprised as this happens) the ruins of another church.

There's a church here. No big deal we'll just build a better one over it.

Another great view that we get from Perugia. City of Endless Views. Yeah.

So actually before we went to Saint Peter's Church we got pizza at this place called Pompeii. Look who else ate there:

Yeah that's right. Mother Teresa. Anyway, we got way too much food and were there for two hours. Some of the favorites:

French fries and curry on pizza. And my Pizza was called Spartacus.

Mmmmm. So after spending like 7 hours wandering around Perugia's treasures, Mary and I rested up. The next day we went to Siena!

Freaking gorgeous.

Roommates in the main piazza thing (it's shaped like a shell!) of Siena!

On top of the... I have no idea what I was on but it was by the Duomo and gave a great panorama of Siena. There was a soccer game going on so we could hear the mall chanting and stuff. And the weather was lovely!

The Duomo.

The staircase we had to go up and down was... an experience. I swear no one here has broad shoulders. I was like squeezing to get up and down. And I had to concentrate on the stairs so it made me kind of dizzy. WORTH IT.

So after our descent Mary and I were walking back through Siena trying to figure out how to kill some time before the bus came back. At first we passed but on second thought decided to go into the wildly popular, well-known, and crowded TORTURE MUSEUM.

Umm. It wasn't crowded. We were the only ones in there. I had no idea Siena even had this. I guess that's not something you advertise to people to get them to tour your city.

While were were alone in there, they had this creepy music playing. The idea of being in a room full of torture devices is unsettling, but with horror-movie music it's downright scary. Every noise made me jump and I had to keep checking to make sure nothing weird was going on behind me.

But fo realz, it was pretty interesting and cool. I mean, I have no idea how anyone could be so cruel as to come up with some of this stuff.

Creepy executioner. I was certain that it would move. It didn't. But if it had I probably would have run out of the museum crying.

We left the museum, got some gelato (banana is almost as good as pistachio) and headed home. All in all, I definitely could have stayed more in Siena. It was great! And less hilly than Perugia. And the Tuscan countryside is stunning. Gahhh I love it here so much!

Ps. Mom, I still eat vegetables. Proof:

And I got an A on my Italian midterm. Just so everyone knows. 1 midterm down, 3 to go, then SPRING BREAK! SO EXCITED!


Ciao tutti!