Siena and Greve

Yesterday we spent our Saturday touring outside of Florence and in the near by cities of Siena and Greve. We went to Siena first to see Siena's Cathedral Complex. Siena is different from Florence in the fact that it is a city built in the hills, where Florence is built in a valley, so it seems like everything (the street, the shops, the cafe tables ect) are on a steep slant up or down. Siena also likes to claim decent from Romulus and Remus, the founding brothers of Rome, so the image of the She Wolf and the twins is found all over the city and in much of its art.
 Over here in Europe, churches are very modest so you have to cover you're shoulders (both men and women) and you can't show too much of you're legs. This lead to a lot of scarves on the behalf of us girls as we all tried to wear longer dresses and loose flowing clothing to beat the heat. However, if you forget, the churches have lovely little white ponchos that we heard some mom tell her daughter was the cape of shame that she had to wear again because she wore a strapless dress that day.  I also saw some guy in a bro tank who had to wear a cape of shame too because his shoulders were bare and that is not allowed. See? Even the Big Guy up stairs doesn't like bro tanks.
The Cathedral was hands down the most beautiful church/cathedral/ building I have ever seen in my life. Normally They are pretty on the inside but nothing I have ever seen has even come close to how magnificent  this cathedral was. The outside of it looked almost like a cake with all the detail and marble figures that were on it. Because of the intricate outside, I did not expect the inside to be as detailed as it was. Generally it seems like it is one or the other; you have a fancy cover or a fancy inside. Nope, the inside of this Cathedral was equally as beautiful with high arching, vaulted, blue fresco stared ceilings, and stunning marble floors (that we were lucky enough to get to see. In a few weeks they will cover the floors for a portion of the year for preservation purposes.)
We enjoyed lunch in Siena (I had a huge sandwich with this peppery salami, greens, a really strong cheese and olive oil and balsamic vinegar) and then we toured the Palazzo Pubblico, which was the palace of the Siena. The people of Siena focused a lot on the the thought of the common good to create a happy state for all its citizens.
At the end of the day, I don't really feel like I saw much of Siena. We were a church, a Cathedral, the museum for the Cathedral, and the Plazzo Pubblico and then we had to leave. I wish we could have had some more time to explore and see more of the city even though it was only a day trip.
Our second big stop of the day was to Greve which is in wine country for the Greve wine festival. Wine country is everything you expect and more. Its all the sprawling fields of straight lines of grapes spread out as far as the eye can see, surrounded by silver leaved oil trees. The end of September marks the harvest of the grapes, and the end of October marks the harvest of the olives so as far as Christian and I are concerned, we did it right coming on our fall semester. The wine festival cost us ten euros and we were given a glass and a pouch to keep the glass in, and a punch card with eight punches (and some vendors either forgot to stamp your card or they would just wave you off with out stamping it. I personally only got through 6 punches and one of those the vendor waved me off with a free glass of red wine which was quiet good might I add.) We only had an hour at the wine festival which was a shame because I didn't get to learn as much about the wine as I wanted to. I can't tell you the names or the specific types of wine that I drank because I didn't have time to learn about them. I can tell you I had about four or five different types of pink wine (I love pink wine), a red, and an orange wine. The orange wine was really think and almost syrup like and had a vanilla scent and was not incredibly well liked among me and my friends, but we all agreed its because it was such a heavy wine and that tonic water or a sprite soda or something would make it lighter and much more enjoyable. Marty also got a chance to enjoy the wine festival as he had a chance to take a picture in my glass of wine. Our trip coordinator Jodi saw this and got concerned asking me "Laura! What happened to you're wine! Did they give that to you!" So Marty got introduced to some pink wine and Jodi.
Finally, we wrapped up the day with another fantastic Carmen dinner. First course was spaghetti. Yes. I have officially had Italian spaghetti and it was amazing. They were really big thick spaghetti noodles (not angel hair pasta) tossed in a thin tomato sauce (that was not at all super sweet which was super nice) with thinly sliced egg plant and mozzarella cheese. Second course was chicken and grapes (which was an experiment and a very tasty one at that) and then a lemon chicken that was also super good. And for dessert we had a tiny little chocolate pastry cake and fresh peaches. All around it was a simply fantastic day, but Christian and I do look forward to laying low today on our first day off since we got here a little over a week ago.