Our second day trip from Siena was to the village San Gimignano (jim-in-yanno). Centuries ago in towns such as Siena and San Giminano, it was a sign of wealth to build a tower onto your home, but later a king demanded all such towers be torn down in deference to his authority. While Siena had some dozen plus towers, San Gimignano had 72, and is said to be where the legend of Rapunzel originated. Now only a few remain whole, while the bases of others dot the ci...

For our first free travel-day in Siena, Becky and I chose to head out to see Pisa. We got started a little late due since we decided to walk to the train station. However, after getting on the city busy at Pisa, which was supposed to be heading the right direction, we discovered that it made a loop, and there were two different stops heading the same direction, and we got on the wrong one. We were delayed by a few minutes, but made it to the Piazza dei Miracoli...

Today, our first day in Siena was jam-packed. We started out with a walk through the city to the main square, the Piazza del Campo. From there we split up to do drawings for a couple hours. The group then met back up on the hill to look at the exterior of Santa Maria della Scalla, one of the first institutionalized hospitals in Europe. We then toured Siena's cathedral, the Duomo. Originally intended to be the largest cathedral in existance, construction wa...

Arriving in Florence in the early afternoon, we headed off to see Ponte Vecchio (vecki-yo), the most distinctive and probably most famous bridge in Florence. On the way, we passed by the Duomo, more formally known as Santa Maria del Fiore, and the Florentine town hall, Palazzo Vecchio. We did some form studies of the bridge and the jewlery shops on top of it before the group split up for the night. Yesterday we headed to the more modern outskirts of the city to ...

We arrived in Venice Friday evening, in the rain, and our first view of the famous canals and narrow, winding streets was from underneath an umbrella, as the rain continued on Saturday. We woke up yesterday morning and headed into the city. Our first stop was the square at San Marco cathedral, where the place was so flooded that the elevated sidewalks were out (the water was over knee-height in places). We then headed over to the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, ...