New Moon Set in Montepulciano and Siena

Ciao! After 7 days of traveling I decided to take today off and not travel to Pisa and Lucca. I think we may be doing that next weekend.

But now it's time for me to update about our crazy ass adventures that took place yesterday. Needless to say, I am now the Queen of the train system. After getting to the station about 7 minutes before our train was scheduled to leave, we had to buy our tickets (which was an adventure to figure out where and how to do that), board our train... try to figure out if it was even the correct train, and then chill for 2ish hours until we got the Chiusi train station. After that we thought that we had to take a different train to Montepulciano, but when I asked we found out that the train would only take us to the bottom of the hill and then it would be a 7km climb to the top. So we had to find bus to get us to Montepulciano (about 20km away)... well after over an hour on the hot, winding, curvy, constantly stopping bus, we got there.

So for those of us out there who are complete Twilight nerds, yesterday was a dream! (Not as good as meeting Rob Pattinson, but dang close). We got to see the set/staging area for one to the most critical scenes in New Moon. I'll try to explain the next few photos the best I can. For more though, check out my facebook page, I uploaded a whole album dedicated to this (Over 100 photos... yes I'm a dork).

This is a casting call for residents to be extras at the festival that takes place in the book.
This is a view of Montepulciano from the outside of the Inner city.
This is the entrance to the city where Alice will drive up in her Yellow Porsche with Bella.

This is a landscape view of Montepulciano.

Here are 2 of my roomates and I with beautiful Tuscany behind us.

Here is the center of the city, Il Palazzo Communale. This is where the festival will take place and be filmed.

Here is a close up of the clock in which Bella will notice that it is almost noon and rush to save Edward.
Here is the fountain that they built specifically for the movie set. This Palazzo doesn't normally have a fountain.

This is one of my favorite pictures... it's me in the 'Oh no Edward, don't do it, I'm alive' Bella poses.
I climbed the tower and took a few pictures from up above... the view was amazing.

Siena!!!

After visiting Montepulciano, Jess, Ellis, and myself decided to hop a bus and go to Siena. Well needless to say, our experience was rather... interesting. We were on a bus of Italian teenagers. Wow... an hour and a half bus ride and I know that my sister will love Europe. The boys were rather cute (their mother still buy their underwear). But these were just some of the loudest and most rude teens I've ever seen. I don't know if I'm just too old and don't remember what it was like, but dear God, it seems as though they've gotten worse. Granted, I wouldn't change the experience for the world, it was really cool to experience that.

Once we arrived in Siena, we decided that we were too lazy to walk to the center of town, Piazza del Campo, so we took a Taxi. 8 Euro later... we were there.

This is the Piazza del Campo, and this is where the Siena Horse races are held every single year. It's a huge event and the crowds are crazy. It was absolutely beautiful, I could have stayed there for hours.

This is the Piazza from another angle and zoomed in a little.

My roommates and I bought matching little kid Siena shirts. We thought they were really cute. A little dorky, but fun! This was us waiting at the train station to get back home.

The train ride home was also an adventure. We got on the train, and one stop in, it stopped... for 30 minutes. We were punchy, tired, giggley, HOT, and just wanted to go home... so once we finally got back to Florence we were 30 minutes late.

All in all though, it was a grand adventure of a day. I loved every minute of it... but 7 days of traveling really took it out of me. Classes start tomorrow so things should slow down a little now. I'm really excited to see what I learn. :) I'll update when things get interesting again.

Until then, Ciao Bella e Bello!