Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Week 7 - A fairly unorganized but worthwhile trip to Pisa & Siena


This last week was a pretty busy week in studio, with a presentation for our piazza studies and our design presentation around the corner… Thursday we presented what we have so far for our two piazzas and got feedback for the final board that is due back in Moscow. 
That night was our second last group dinner. At that dinner four of us spontaneously decided to leave the town and go travel for two days. The plan was to leave Friday at 7am from Termini to Pisa and later that day to Siena where we would spend the night. Well by Thursday 11pm we had neither a place to stay nor did we know the train connections to either of our destinations. To top it all our internet decided to shot off and not work for the rest of the day. So we got up Friday at 5:30 (hoping the internet was back on) got some addresses for hostels in Siena and at least got a glimpse at the trains and left the apartment at 6:20 heading to Termini. We were lucky there was a train leaving within the next 8 minutes, the only thing was that the train was waiting at the 2 E track, what was about half a mile from the regular tracks, but that didn’t bother us for the next 5 min until somebody of our group asked out loud “hey what does 2 E mean?!” By now the it was 3 min before the train leaves and we started sprinting… (our poor girls were wearing sandals!!). Beside that little sprint in Termini everything else went pretty smoothly, if you consider the huge amount of time that we spend on organizing the trip… Pisa was very interesting, I heard about the leaning tower so often but never seen it in person, and I must say it is leaning pretty bad, more than I thought. So of course we took some “touristy” picture, we hit the tower leaned against it, hugged it, blow it over, caught it and tons of other random poses. After that giant photo shoot, we split up to explore Pisa for a little longer before we were heading Siena.Just a 2 hour train right and we got into Siena. And Siena is beautiful! I liked the city from the very first moment on. I have been to so many beautiful places here in Italy, and Siena is definitely one of the most memorable ones. I was impressed by the main piazza, piazza del campo (famous through the “Pailo di Siena", one of the hardest horse races in the world). The piazza is sloping down so at night there are hundreds of people sitting on it (almost like in an amphitheater, with the exception that there is no stage that they are looking at). The piazza is one of Europe’s greatest medieval squares. I have always heard about its beauty and architectural integrity, and now that I have seen it I can say that it is true.All in all it was a really worthwhile trip that we made, I was debating weather I should go or not because of studio that is due next week, but I know I would have regret if I wouldn’t have gone. Here is a panoramic photo of the Piazza del campo.

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