this past three-day weekend my friends claire, natania and myself went to tuscany. we stopped over in florence, siena, castellina in chianti and san gimagnano. now look at the pretty pictures.

this is the famous ponte vecchio, over the arno river in florence. there's tons of fancy shmancy shops across of it. needless to say, i bought nothing there, although i somehow talked myself into buying a leather jacket at an outdoor market later.

this is entitled "claire, pensive (over the arno)". it is in black and white because it is serious.

vespas, in florence. i want one!

here's a view of siena from the house of saint catherine, who happens to be the patron saint of siena, and who happens to also share my name. coincidence? anyway, siena is a town i highly recommend, but never go to the restaurant that promises you pasta, bread and wine for euro 7.50. they lie.

this is natania, myself and claire outside of a cafe in the main piazza of siena, which is called il campo. it's a really cool piazza because it's shaped like a shell and slants -- for their famous horse race every year, the palio, they dump dirt in this piazza to make the race course. anyway, i don't recommend this cafe as the waitress was an enormous biatch.

here's a place where we stopped during our badass bike ride along the chianti road. 60 miles, baby! ok, more like 30, but we are still badass because we did half of it in the pouring rain.

and here i am, in a field outside of san gimagnano. if you ever want to be blown away, take the bus from siena to san gimagnano. it will knock your socks off.