Assisi Trip

So I am really far behind on my blog so I am just going to pick up where I left off and hopefully I will remember everything. The weekend after our second trip to Florence we had a field trip to Assisi. We took the pink bus again and I got a picture of it this time to show you how ridiculous it was.

First, we went to St. Francis Basilica. It was probably one of my favorite churches that I have visited since I've been in Italy. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take picture inside which was the most beautiful part but I got some pictures of the outside.

Next Marco gave us a short tour of Assisi which is where he is from. It is pretty similar to Orvieto, a small town on a hill with narrow streets and pretty views to the surrounding area. These are some pictures of the town.

In the afternoon we walked up to a castle on top of the hill in Assisi. It was really cool. You could see the whole city from up there. I paid to go into the castle which was definitely worth it. These are some pictures from the castle. 

After the castle a bunch of us girls headed to Perugia which is a short train ride from Assisi. We had a hostel in Perugia for one night. I didn't have too much time in Perugia because we got there late in the afternoon and I left the next morning but we had a girls night out on Friday. It was a lot of fun. These are my pictures from Perugia.

On Saturday a few of us headed to Lake Trasimeno which is pretty close to Perugia. It was really pretty and a really nice day. There is a park on the shore of the lake. We hung out there for awhile and got gelato. Then we explored the town a little and found a hike to do. The hike was basically a road but it wasn't busy and we got great views of the lake. On our way down we got to see the sunset over the lake. These are some of my pictures from Lake Trasimeno. 

After the hike we found dinner and headed back to Orvieto. On our way back we stopped in Arezzo to transfer trains. We had enough time between trains to explore the town a little bit and get a drink at one of the bars near the station. We didn't get back to Orvieto until almost 11:00 p.m. I had all day Sunday to just relax before class on Monday. Overall it was a pretty good weekend. 

~ Jena

Florence Round 2

Last weekend (March 2nd and 3rd), we took our second trip to Florence. The purpose of this trip was for Marco to take us on a tour through the Uffizi Gallery. The Uffizi is a very famous gallery in Florence; the Italian version of the Louvre in Paris. It features work by Botticelli, Micheangelo, DaVinci and many other pre-renaissance and renaissance masters. It was amazing but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures so I don't have any to show you.

After our tour of the Uffizi, my roommates and I went to check into our hostel. We had booked the same one we had stayed in last time on hostelworld.com. When we got to our hostel, for some reason, they didn't have our reservation. I'm still not sure why our reservation didn't go through but it didn't and the hostel was booked and we had no where to stay. The five of us went on a search for a hostel. We only found one that had five beds available but it was pretty far from the center of town so some of the girls didn't want to stay there. We  walked around for almost three ours looking for a hostel. We were all getting hungry and grumpy. Katy, Rachel, and Natalie eventually gave up and headed back to the train station. I was still determined to stay the night in Florence so thankfully Caitlin stayed with me. We finally found a hostel with a private two person room. It was a little more expensive than our original hostel but we didn't really have any other options. After dropping our backpacks off at the hostel we went straight to a little burrito joint I read about in one of my tour books. We got a giant plate of nachos and split a burrito. It didn't really taste Mexican but was still really good. Later that night we met up with some of our other friends and went to our first Italian "discoteche."

The next morning we went to a famous art store in Florence called Zecchi. I got a small red sketchbook made from recycled paper. Then we got some delicious soup at a little caffe for lunch. After lunch we spent the rest of the day at the Boboli Gardens which is the Italian version of Versailles in France. We just walked around, sketched, and took pictures for almost four hours before heading back to Orvieto. These are some pictures from the Boboli Gardens.