Siena

It was dusk by the time we arrived in Siena and guess what? It wasn't raining! My friend Elizabeth had recommended we take a bus from the train station located at a bottom of a very large hill to our destination at the top of the hill within the city walls. It was a beautiful night and we were tired of sitting, so we thought we'd walk. That was easier said than done, as there was a sizable and busy roadway between the train station and the old city. After wandering a bit trying to find a way across what appeared to be a highway of sorts, meandering through a pretty modern mall and a parking ramp, we decided to take the bus. After struggling to figure out where exactly the bus station was, and then which exact bus would get us to our destination, we took an educated guess, and by that I mean we just jumped on a packed bus and crossed our fingers.

Once we made it inside the walls, we knew we were on the right track and we didn't want to risk being taken outside of the city walls by the bus, so we hopped off and made our way to our hotel on foot. By the time we made it into the walled area it was dark and we walked the dimly lit medieval streets, hiking up and down steep cobble stone lanes. Siena is a beautiful city and we were excited to get to our room, get settled and check out the town.

After checking in, we were pleasantly suprised to find out that we had been upgraded! We stayed on a small street, via Giglio, not far from the Campo, or main square of the town.

Stopover in Pisa

As you can imagine, we were pretty excited to get out of Cinque Terre and into a city with a little more, well..."city." We took an early train out of the CT and were on our way in no time.

Pisa is not far from the Cinque Terre, and more or less on the way to Siena, so we decided to do a stop there to check out the Leaning Tower and get a brief glimpse of the rest of the city. After storing our luggage and picking up a map, we exited the train station. We had grown quite accustomed to the rain in Cinque Terre, so we weren't going to let the fact that it was pretty much pouring rain get in the way of our fun.

Speaking of getting in the way-- have any of you ever traveled through major Italian cities on rainy days? Well, this was our first time, and as we exited the station sharing our crummy umbrella, we had to run the gauntlet of men selling umbrellas to ill-prepared tourists.

"Umbrella, Umbrella?" Uh, no thanks. "Umbrella, Umbrella?" Uh, no we're fine, thanks. "Umbrella, Umbrella? Look, we said no to the last two guys, so no, no thanks. "Umbrella, Umbrella?" SERIOUSLY? No! "Umbrella, Umbrella" Is this some kind of joke? "Umbrella, Umbrella?" AHHHH!H!H!H!H.

You get the idea. Eventually, we gave in after the 103rd person asked us. I guess that's how the system works. As we walked the city crowded with umbrella-outfitted tourists and locals, we took in the sights.

Merry Christmas!

The 'Singing Christmas Tree' in Zurich, Switzerland

Santa Claus is Coming To Town from Via Picnic on Vimeo.

The Cinque Terre

It was our longest train ride to date. Over 12 hours from Fussen, Germany to Vernazza, Italy. To put it mildly, the views were nice.

Fussen Pretzel Picnic

It was a warm autumn day in Fussen - perfect picnic weather.

We got pretzels!