Last weekend, some other students at the school and I made day trip to a nearby town, San Gimignano, which is also known as the Manhattan of Tuscany for its multitude of towers. The towers were built in the middle ages by wealthy merchants to show off their success, and became a competition in the city. There were at one point hundreds, I think, and today there are still around 70 or so. I’m not sure that I would have dubbed it so, but it is interesting anyways.

It’s about an hour away by bus. The trains don’t seem to be as prevalent a means of transportation here as they were, say, in Belgium. They exist, but since the station is outside of Siena, and they take longer, people recommend the bus instead. It’s a nice little medieval village, where we had a nice lunch, good gelato (they claim the world’s best… it was definitely good, but I think I’d have to retest vs some we had in Rome last year…), and viewed the duomo, which is covered with frescoes telling biblical stories.

Boo. I just typed up a long post describing the events of the last two weeks, and right at the end the computer crashed. Suffice it to say, I’m now in Siena, taking an Italian course at Saena Iulia, a small school here. It’s going slowly, but Siena is nice. More later.

“We have earthquakes, surfers, snowboarders, hollywood… It’s an exciting place to live!”

Now, I know one might have to stretch to make it living in L.A. sound good, but I think earthquakes as a selling point is a bit much.

My guidebook claims that over 600 people are admitted to hospitals annually in Paris for slipping on dog feces in the street. Astounding. Of course, I haven’t actually seen that much on the sidewalks here, but maybe I just haven’t been attentive enough (yes, I’ve checked my shoes…).

I ate dinner last night at a restaurant suggested by Casey (who’s out of town this weekend) called Relais de l’Entrecote. They have only one dish, steak & fries, which is posted on a menu by the door. Group after group of tourists would come up and peer at the menu, trying to understand, until the waitresses would explain to them that there was only one dish. Many of them would then walk away, which is understandable… in a group, how likely is it that you’ll get everyone to agree to ordering one thing? Leave it to the French to stick to their guns (har har), but the stubbornness seems to work for this place, as they were pretty packed as the evening wore on. The steak was good (in a tasty sauce), and they refilled the plate when it was empty (which I wasn’t expecting).

As you might have surmised, I’m now in Paris. Back in the land of the funky keyboard. Kristiansand, where I was over a week ago, was pretty small. They bill themselves as Norway’s number 1 beach resort, and even have a few palm trees that they bring out in the summer to put by the town beach. They have a cute little area of restaurants by the fish market (which is indoors, unlike the earlier fish markets I’ve seen), all of which were quite busy. The rest of the town seemed somewhat empty, and there wasn’t much to it.

I took a quick daytrip up the coast to an even smaller town, Grimstad, which has nice little white houses on a couple walking streets and a large guest harbor. I guess its a popular stop for yachts sailing around Norway. They had a nice little restaurant overlooking the harbor called Dr. Bergen, which of course I went to.

I took the ferry from Kristiansand to Hirtshals. It was thoroughly uninteresting, as it was such a large ferry that most of the seats couldn’t even see a window. The only outdoor section was the smokers area, which was _packed_, and had signs warning that the smokestacks often discharge soot and standing out there was at your own risk. Once in Hirtshals, which was shown in my guide as on the rail network, I found that one needed to take a ‘local’ train to Hjorring, which seemed similarly small, but was on the national train network. After what was altogether longer than it needed to be, I arrived in Arhus (Denmark).

Arhus is a nice little town, which is appearantly kept lively by the fact that it’s a college town. Unfortunately, the main attraction (at least in my guide) is an outdoor museum depicting life in an old Danish village, and it rained continuously and hard while I was in Arhus. Maybe next time.

I stopped in Amsterdam on the way between Arhus and Paris, as it’s about 18 hours of travel, and I draw the line at 12 hours of continuous travel for it to be comfortable. I’m glad I stopped, though, because coming from the uninspired architecture of most of Norway’s cities, Amsterdam is really pretty. I guess my previous impression was marred by having come almost directly from Bruges.

Anywho, I’m now in Paris, and will be here til Monday, when I meet up with my dad and family friends to spend the week at their place, which I’m looking forward to.