Italy: Day 3: Heading towards Rome through San Gimignano

Some more scenery from our Tuscan home

We saw some stunning view on our way

I swear my parents don't like taking pics with me!

A family's own personal vineyard 

The town of San Gimignano (or San G. for short)

This town was known for its towers

We were fascinated by the man at the top of one of the towers

He wasn't real though...

The town had some old paintings in the walls

and a cool set of stairs.

A water well. I feel like I'm back in Morocco

Some cool roof tops

I was shocked that this man would walk around without his pants!

Some stoned men (made of stone)

A cute little restaurant we ate at on our way to Rome

On day 3 of our Italy trip, we sadly had to leave Tuscany, but we were making our way towards Rome, which would be "an adventure" as my dad quoted many times throughout the trip. On our way to Rome, we thought it would be nice to drive through some of the country side, and see some of the smaller towns. We wanted to stop in San Gimignano, since Antonella told us it was a lovely and worthwhile place to see. So, we stopped on the way in the town, and it was very lovely and picturesque. The town was full of cobblestone roads and sidewalks, and little corner cafes, very Italian in my opinion. 

We saw the towers, which apparently back in the day, people were racing to build these towers, so they were pretty cool. We saw some more scenery and views of the countryside, and random man sculptures places throughout the city. One sculpture had a man on top of a tower, another one was of a naked man, which was shocking after living in Bahrain, where you would even see something like that in a doctors office, let alone out in public. Then, we saw some men made of stone. So, man sculptures were quite popular. We heard church bells, and looked in some shops. Eventually, it was time for us to get back on the road, since we had to have our rental car back by about 6pm, and still had a few hours of driving to go. On our way to Rome, we stopped at yet another cute restaurant in Sienna and had some lunch.

Getting to Rome was fairly easy, but once we were actually in the city, it wasn't so easy anymore. The traffic was very bad and intense, and similar to Bahrain, the people don't seem to follow as many traffic rules as they do in the U.S. My dad was freaking out. We found the apartment and dropped the luggage outside to leave with my mom and Charmaine, while my dad and I looked for the car rental place where we were supposed to return our rental. What a mission that was. The rental place wasn't where it was said on the papers address, so we began asking and searching. We ended up turning into the bus lane and doing something else wrong, and the police make us pull over, and my dad feared he was going to get a ticket. Luckily, the cop was kind enough not to give a ticket, and attempted to guide us, although he spoke no English, and I have had no training in Italian. After asking a million people for directions and getting endlessly lost, we found the train station, where the car rental place was inside. The lady directed us to the garage where we had to drop off the car. Then, we had the mission of finding our way back to our apartment. Finally, hours later, we made it back, where my mom and Charmaine were still sitting outside with all the bags. They didn't think to look at the door and ring the bell, and Antonella had been waiting upstairs the whole time. We got moved in to our tiny Rome apartment. We were exhausted from all the travel, and decided to call it an early night and head to bed. The next day, we would start the big exploration of the city. How exciting it would be!