L'avventura italiana: Lots of trains...and sore legs

Weekend Part 1 was a lot of fun! We got up early yesterday morning and walked to the train station to make our way to Pisa! After about an hour ride, we made it to Pisa. Instead of getting a cab to take us to the leaning tower, we decided to walk instead. Unfortunately, it was about 1.25 miles to get there! At least we got our exercise for the afternoon. Seeing the leaning tower of Pisa in person is awesome. We were excited to get our pictures where it looks like we're "holding up" the leaning tower. There was also a big ceremony going on at the tower yesterday when we were there because June 2nd is a national holiday in Italy called Festa della Repubblica (which is similar to our 4th of July). There were a lot of military people there in uniform, and several people were making speeches. Since I don't speak Italian I couldn't tell what they were saying, but I assume it was important!
After a while, we left the leaning tower and walked back to the train station to catch a train to Viareggio. I had never heard of Viareggio before, but we went there because it had a really nice beach! This beach was really nice because it wasn't too crowded, and there were chairs and colorful umbrellas as far as you could see. We made sure to step in the water, but since it was so cold, we didn't go any farther than ankle-deep. We spent most of the time there laying out in the sun and relaxing. There were a times when it was hot and sunny, but there were also a couple spots where it actually sprinkled rain on us! Since there was some cloud cover, I luckily didn't get sunburnt :)
After our time at the beach, we took ANOTHER train to Siena where we were going to stay for the night. We checked in at the hotel and freshened up a little before heading out in Siena to get dinner. What I didn't know about Siena is that it is incredibly hilly. We literally had to take about 200 stairs up to get from our hotel to get to the main part of the city. All of the streets in Siena are also very steep. Think of it as an older version of San Francisco. We ate dinner at a cute side-street restaurant, and then headed back to the hotel to sleep since we were all tired! This morning, we got up and went back to downtown Siena (up 200 stairs again!) to see the sights in the city. We walked around for a while and saw a lot of gorgeous views and a lot of really cool buildings. After a few hours, we took our last train back to Florence and now get to relax for a while. Unfortunately, it's only for a few hours because a couple of us leave again tomorrow morning (at 5:30 am!) to go with the school group to Nice.
Although my legs are really sore and I'm pretty tired, the mini trip that we made was a lot of fun and I was glad to see everything we did. Tomorrow I get to start a whole new adventure for the rest of the weekend! Let's hope that my legs will still be working by Monday.