fried rice pudding!

This has been a pretty relaxing weekend so far. After a 4 hour meal at the Secret Restaurant (which still happens to be my favorite restaurant here in Perugia despite their slowness), we hung out and had a good time. We were going to go bowling, but perhaps some other time.
This morning we woke up early and headed off to Siena which is not too far, about 3 hours by train-- a train with tons of connections, might I add.
Getting there was easy as pie (and fine free!), we had a little bit of a wait in Chiusi, Kristen and I wandered around while Anthony sat in the train station. We had some cappuccino and then we were off! Once we got to Siena we had to take a bus up to a main piazza close to the center of the town. We were planning on meeting Margaux and Meg there who had basically slept overnight in Siena after a few mishaps of not finding a hostel in Pisa where they had been the day before.
Kristen, Anthony, and I wandered into a duomo (though not the main one) which was pretty cool, more modern than most, and definetely not as ornate. It was Saint Catherine's church and they had her face/head (I really hope that wasn't real) and her finger (which was real and freaked me out). I really don't get why they need to have pieces of the saints bodies out on display. Just let them rest in peace.
After spending some time there, we wandered towards the main duomo which you could see from every direction.
Once there, we paid to go in (first duomo to charge entrance), but it was probably my favorite so far. It was quite large, due to its several renovations over the years, and there were many things to look at. Of note, there was a giant room (I'm pretty sure it was a library) with many different books in it that were open to pages and pages of beautiful images and old writings.

(library and an open book page)

The floors throghout the duomo were all tiled images and they were amazing, even moreso than most of the paintings on the walls. One painting was in a separate prayer area and it was that of Mary and the christ child and I had definetely just seen that, and discussed it in my renaissance art class. I love applying things I learn in that class to the real life paintings/sculptures/architecture I see while exploring the different cities in Italy.
After seeing all the sights in the duomo we headed off to the main center of Siena, which is basicaly like the big hangout place-- a giant tower and museum and then in front of it, almost an amphitheatre-like set up, I decided it would be a great place for a live concert.

(Il campo)

People were laying on the ground in the sun (it was rather chilly) and there was even a fountain in the center that had well water dating very far back (I apologize for never remember any dates). The water was sooo good. Anyway, we were starving and I was about to eat my arm when I saw a weird little wooden building separate from the rest of the shops and near the end of the center part. We walked towards it because a few people were looking for an ATM. I realized that the building was actually selling what appeared to be little balls of fried dough. I was starving and it smelled good so I got in the small line to buy whatever it was. Then I started watching them make it and notice the ingredients on the wall along with the name "Fritteria _____" (boo I forgot). The ingredients included rice and flour and even orange. To my (and everyone else's) surprise and enjoyment, it was fried rice pudding (at least that's what we decided it was)! I thought they weren't frying the little balls of dough enough in the middle and that there was all raw dough, but then I realized, it's rice pudding! My new favorite thing ever.

(anthony eating the fried rice pudding)

We eventually found a little pizza place that had really good thin thin pieces of pizza as well as calzones (which here, are just folded over pizzas). I had a slice of funghi (mushroom) and an artichoke calzone (SO GOOD).
After eating we headed back to the center to check out the museum and tower, unfortunately the tower closed at 3pm and the museum was closing in a few minutes. Margaux and Meg paid to go in to see a famous fresco for a few minutes while the rest of us went back outside to hang out in the sun (and buy more delicious fried rice pudding). Apparently it was some type of holiday (when is it not a holiday in Italy?) and there were tons of little kids running around the center in costumes. It reminded me of Halloween, except I didn't really see any candy. They were all buying confetti and throwing it around and also spraying silly string, it was kind of gross and getting everywhere and made me mad that some poor custodial type people are going to have to clean up all the mess. Oh well.
After that we made our way home through the winding streets of Seina, watched a man paint pictures with spray paint (and then have to pay a fine for selling things on a street without a permit), and waited in the train station for our final departure.
Siena was truly beautiful, and I would absolutely go back considering I didn't get to do so many of the things there. The rest of this week coming up is mainly school work... I found another possible flight to Paris and decided to book it. It's the last weekend in March, I have no assignments due, it was only 184 US DOLLARS (woot) and hopefully I will be staying with Laura (!) and her friend Laura (confusing, no?) Now I just need to learn a bit more french than "parle vous frances"
Not much else to update on, hope you are all having a lovely weekend.
Ciao!
**I wanted to post a picture of me and my friends at dinner just to show you my usual group of friends so you have a good idea of who I'm talking about all the time.
This is from when Meg made us an amazing dinner. From left to right is Margaux (the best Italian speaker of the bunch of us, and incredibly smart biology major from Tufts), Kristen (another genius bio-chemist from Oregon), Anthony (our token male), Jackie (my best friend here), Me, and Meg, she's from Jersey too and she's awesome! They're all awesome :)