Italian Gardens: Piensa

3 March

Allora, so I know I'm still a month behind but in my defense our internet has ceased to function, thus hindering my chance to get all updated. Anyways, this post was another one of our Italian Gardens field trips, in this case the gardens of Piensa.

Actually the gardens of Piensa are really quite boring but our teacher insisted on seeing them because they were one of the first examples of a Mannerist garden in Italy. The view above is from the garden itself looking towards the the cathedral next door.

We were given a tour of the palace which housed the gardens. This is our class looking out from the loggia to the garden and Tuscan hillsides beyond.

The facade of the church that I took a picture of in the very first picture. Overall, Piensa was a very quaint medieval town. We didn't get a chance to see a whole lot of it before we had to hop on the bus again but it wasn't that bad because...

On the way home we stopped at a extremely small town, whose name we never learned to see some spectacular hot springs. Honestly, the hot springs are the only thing keeping this perilously small collection of buildings alive.

This pond is the runoff of the springs at the bottom of the cliff, too cold to be enjoyed as a hot spring unfortunately.

As usual, I never fail to take advantage of the macro feature of my camera. This is a shot of some of the limestone deposits left by the hot spring water.

Slowly but surely I'm getting caught up with my posts. Maybe with a little luck and diligence I can get all the way caught up before I depart for Croatia on Spring Break.