Happy Birthday to...ME!!!

Yes, I celebrated my birthday in Italy this year (July 1st)...and I'm now 23 (so I can now feel REALLY old when talking to all the recent high school graduates on their graduation trips..oh well). But it was amazing to spend my birthday in Italy.

The first part of my birthday was spent traveling from Florence to Siena. But I didn't care because I found the Tuscan countryside just so beautiful to watch as we passed by! I absolutely loved the Tuscan Hills as they changed from being covered in trees to golden wheat fields. But each of them offered charming villas resting on the hillsides and in the valleys. It was just so beautiful!
The sunflowers were amazing! We found these on our walk from our Hotel to the small town.

Once in Siena, we had an adventure trying to find our hotel. Due to "The Palio" being the following day, there were no hostels or hotels available within the city of Siena, so we settled for a nice hotel in a nearby village. With some luck and good directions from people we got on the correct bus to the small town. However, once in that town...we had no clue where to go. Once again, we were lucky and found some nice people in the ice cream shop who pointed us down the correct road and told us to walk about a mile or so. So we were sent off out of town walking along a two-lane highway (with hardly any shoulder) carrying our packs. But we did make it and found a great hotel with an incredibly nice family who ran it.

Siena's main square, Il Campo. We had no clue what was instore for us there the following day...

I now can really appreciate a hotel after spending the past two weeks in Hostels with no air conditioners and sharing a room and shower with 4 or more people. So once we were settled and cooled off in our air conditioned room we headed back to Siena to explore. Once in Siena we walked to the Il Campo (town's main square, where the Palio would be held the following day) and to Siena's Duomo. Unfortunatly the Duomo was under restoration, so the front was covered with scafolding. But the inside was extravogant. It was a very beautiful Cathedral with sculptures and beautiful paintings. It was what I expected Florence's Duomo to look like in the inside. It was absolutly beautiful.

The Siena Duomo...unfortunatly it was under reconstruction.

Inside of Siena's Duomo. I loved the colored tiles. It was gorgeous!

After hitting those main spots, we began to wander the streets in search of a telephone to contact my friend Robbie Mitchel (a fellow engineer from OSU who I randomly ran into in the Cinque Terre and is staying in Siena). But of course when you want to find a telephone (at least a working one) you can never! So instead we ended up finding his hostel and stopped by. It was really nice to see Robbie again and catch up. He only had about an hour to spare, so we ended up walking around Siena a bit and got some gelato.

My friend Robbie Mitchell. I still can't believe we ran into him...such a small world.

Once we dropped Robbie off at his hostel again, we found a lovely shaded location under one of the churches. We spend this time relaxing...catching up on postcards and just people watching. After resting our legs we began wandering again and found some nice gardens and a fountain. In this garden was the smallest (and shortest) mazes I have seen. So of course I had to walk through the maze...with all the little kids (the only difference was that I could see over the bushes and they couldn't :) I would definitely have to say that seeing over the bushes definitely takes the fun out of walking through the maze.

For dinner we went to this lovely restaurant that Robbie suggested. He described it as the Restaurant with the view and what a view it did have! We had an amazing view of Siena's Duomo...it was absolutly perfect for my birthday dinner! (Here is the food info specifically for you Aeyoung) And the dinner was the best I had have so far. I have Gnocchi with Truffels which was so delicious and some great white wine! And of course we had to finish the dinner off with dessert (I mean, it was my Birthday!) so we had tiramisu, which was very delicious as well.

Me and Lauren at my birthday dinner!

The view during our dinner...not too bad, eh?

Overall, it was a lovely birthday!