Another weekend, another marvelous chance to go exploring. This weekend took me to Sienna and Cortona. ADA gave us bus tickets to Sienna to see a show, so I cashed mine in early and got a full day of a beautiful city. We headed straight to the Duomo (yes, there is one in every city) and I'm still overwhelmed by this building.

After marveling at the most stunning view of Sienna, we wandered around the city looking for food. Luckily we thought to ask someone in a supermarket for a recommendation, and ended up with really good cheese, ribollita, and wine. I swear I could live off ribollita. It's a traditional tuscan soup, made mostly with oil, bread, and beans. It's hearty and keeps me warm in this unfortunately cold weather.

Honestly, most of the day ended up revolving around food. We found this random hut in the middle of Il Campo, the main public square, and it looked like they were frying butter, so naturally we had to order whatever they were serving. Thank goodness it wasn't really fried butter, but it was the perfect combination of sweet and savory. We swore we would get more, but when we returned it was closed. The mystery of the hut makes the experience all the more satisfying. We finished off the day with pizza, tiramisu gelato and nutella pizza. Granted, I couldn't eat the nutella pizza due to unfortunate allergies, made all the more unfortunate by the fact that all chocolate in this country has hazelnuts in it, but it was still a noteworthy stop on our trip. They really will put nutella on anything here.

After some fantastic walking and eating we saw a show by a German performing group involving masks. The show was phenomenal. It mostly involved grown men wearing masks acting like babies and then old men in a nursing home, all moving to beautiful orchestral music. These performers are extraordinarily talented at moving and telling a story without talking. Plus their integration of music was satisfying. The best part was that we got to meet one of the performers after because one of the directors of our program knows him. Apparently we are well connected here.

The next day my roommate and I woke up to take a short trip to the nearby town of Cortona. This is where the book and movie, "Under the Tuscan Sun" take place. Not that I have read or seen either, but that is what attracts most tourists. It's on the top of a hill, overlooking the edge of Tuscany:

More importantly, Gnoam found a few friends here. 

There are 16 churches in this tiny, hilly town. While we could not possibly make it to all of them, we did make it to a marvelous pastry shop and wandered the streets for a while. We also had a fantastic taxi driver who kept pulling over to the side of the road to give us a history of the town, pointing out the various churches and graveyards. It was nice to have such a thorough description from someone so passionate. It was also nice to realize that we could understand him even though he mostly only spoke Italian. The fact that he was speaking slowly definitely helped.

The best part was when we wandered into a Tabacchi. Tabacchis usually just sell stamps, candy, and cigarettes but I happened to notice stairs in the back of this one. After wandering down the rabbit hole I found a gorgeous gallery. The owner explained to us that he had restored a 4th century BC well, and we saw the fish swimming in it. He had restored the entire building and now had pictures of the Tuscan hillside for sale along with beautiful leather bound books. We made friends with him and he helped us find a cab when we realized we didn't have a working phone and didn't want to walk the 4 miles downhill back to the train station. It's fun to make friends.