Italy

BRB, Going somewhere I haven’t been before.

Landed in florence, took the bus to the main train station, went to a restaurant to try florentine steak.

Got on a bus with the tour guide and were taken to Siena — a town that apparently doesn’t like florence very much. They had an amazing, open central square where they hold the ‘palio’ race twice a year in the summer. Its a tiny town, but they have 16 ‘districts’ that each compete to win. We were told they just wait and prepare for the races the rest of the year.

According to the guide, the town also has the oldest bank in the world and the oldest? (not sure if that’s accurate) hospital in the world.

After Siena they took us to a farm near a town called San Gimignano where we had lunch. The farm had a vineyard as well, and 95% of the food we ate during lunch was made from things grown at the farm.

We then headed to San Gimignano — the town has the store that’s in the guiness book of world records for ‘best gelato’.

The town itself was very beautiful, providing an awesome view of all the surrounding sunflower fields.

After San Gimignano we headed to Pisa, stopping in a parking lot to ride a ‘tschu tschu train’ to the leaning tower.

Pisa was our last stop before heading back to Florence just in time to catch an awesome sunset.

Next day, head to Cinque Terre. We started by reaching Manarola and taking a hike through the fields of the village.

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We took the train from Manarola to the main station to catch our train to Milan. From there we head to the airport and boarded our flight to Athens

Athens up next.