A sleepy visitor!

Right now I’m writing to you in my living room with the door closed because dear Sara is taking a nipper nap. I have to wake her up in about 15 minutes though, so I’ll keep this as brief as possible.

Raquel fell in love with Siena. I think she just has a case of the “big city” gloomies. I went through the same thing. But we had lunch at a the well known piazza in Siena and explored the city. It was a nice day that ended with ice cream. Ohhh yeah.

Yesterday, I was waiting for Sara at the train station where her bus was supposed to show up. She missed the first bus so I waited for a couple of hours. While I was helping some lady buy a ticket (30 minutes before Sara was supposed to get there, mind you) Sara walks into the train station covered in tears.

She had gotten there at 1:10 and it was 1:30. She couldn’t find me and thought she got off at the wrong place. But she was in the coffee shop attached to the train station. I had kept an eye out for her in the station…needless to say, I feel awful. I would’ve reacted exactly the same, with no doubt. Hell..I reacted like that when I was in Venezuela, ha.

But then we hit the road. I bought her lunch ahead of time. We went up to Pisa, even though it was pouring rain. It’s really quite beautiful. We were there for about two hours….I keep on finding this little tiny chain store (called Il Papiro) that carries only letter-writing products (which are adorable). I found one in Florence, another in Siena and then in Pisa. And it’s so bad for my pocket book because I keep thinking of my pen pals.

We had some delicious coffee (Sara took pictures, never fear). She had hot chocolate and I had “caffe marrochino” Oh goodness. The tower was quite breathtaking but I’m still in love with the duomo, or main cathedral in Pisa.

This morning I woke up before the sun and we went to the questura (police station). Let me give you a bit of back story as to why I was so freaking anxious:

in Naples, where I last did my “permission of long stay” it was chaotic and I got so anxious and nervous that I passed out. There was a gigantic flood of people and absolutely nothing made sense. I wasted six hours there, waiting for it to be my turn.

Here in Siena? Literally the opposite. They had appointments (like in Naples but they didn’t go by that), they would call people’s names. If that person wasn’t there, they moved on. And my appointment was at 8:58AM.

Needless to say, it only took a grand total of 5 minutes. I gave them my pictures, I signed underneath it, they took digital fingerprints and they told me they’d send me a text message when it’s ready. I almost collapsed from joy.

Then we went to class and poor Sara, who speaks veeerrryyyyy little Italian, was just nodding off. We went grocery shopping, ate, she’s napping and now I’m here. We’ll be here in Siena until Wednesday, so I don’t know when I’ll next update.

Now that I’m pretty much done with all that bureaucratic nonsense, I can concentrate on traveling and studying! What I was born to do!

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