Luck?

The past couple days in Florence have been very memorable. First of all, if being pooped on by a pigeon is luck, I must be the luckiest person in the world. Yesterday on our day trip to Siena, two different pigeons got me, and two others ran into my head. This wasn't all at once either, it was over the span of 4 hours. It was hilarious.

Earlier that day at the train station, one of them flew right into the back of my head. The first time a pigeon bombe me, it got me on the inside of my left foot. Obviously, this was a sniper pigeon. I had even commented to Rebecca, "Wow, that bird had it out for someone. Good thing it missed me." We then climbed to the top of the bell tower (which was a maze of around 325 tiny steps), I look down, and realize that it did not miss me. We crack up, I clean up, and we make our way to the big church there. As soon as we leave the church, I am bombed again, this time on the head. We were cracking up at this point. Again, I go clean up and we move on. The final attack was by far the mildest and was a mere skimming of the head in the Siena train station. Quite impressive, right?

Well Siena was really cool. The town is divided into something like 17 sections, each with a mascot. My favorite was the turtle (shout out to Amanda) and Rebecca's favorite was the goose. The people in each section are expected to only marry someone in their section. Each July and August, there is a horse race around the town square. The race happens tomorrow, so we got to see it all set up. They lay sand down and put up wooden bleachers and people either sit in the bleachers or in the middle of the track. The race last for only 90 seconds but is apparently quite a big deal. A rider from each section of the town races on horses that are chosen at random. If someone does marry someone from a different section, they return to their home sections during the time of the race. Very old school. I think the race is pretty dangerous too since it's a bareback horse race with people right up next to the track, seperated only by a wimpy fence. We're gonna see who won when we get to Rome. My bet is on the turtle, because slow and steady wins the race. Haaa...

Today we saw David and he was a lot taller than I thought he would be. We weren't supposed to take pictures, so we started taking some by not aiming at all (so we wouldn't get caught). Those came out great (off center, of only random body parts), so then we hid in the crowd and aimed to get some good ones.

After David, we tried (again) to go to the science museum, but it closes at 1:00 on Tuesdays (cuz that makes sense) so we were denied. With much objection, we suffered through another serving of gelato. The food has been amazing so far. Your meal is out to you a lot quicker than in the US, and they've apoligized to us if it takes longer than 10 minutes or so. Niffer's should learn from this.

Last night, Reba and I went to the movies (an English speaking one, of course) and they were showing The Other Boleyn (sp?) Girl. That was a crazy story that neither of us knew very many details of before the movie. It was good to go to the movies and get a little taste of home. We've been borrowing movies from our hotel's collection, but after an hour or so, the DVD player sounds like it is going to take off into outer space, so that's not so cool.

Well tomorrow we head to our final stop, Rome! Our train leaves at 10:15 AM and I will be glad to take my last train for a while. The train always ends up getting us some way (no AC, no seats, no reservations, pigeon attacks, etc), so I'm interested to see what tomorrow brings! Ciao!