Tuesday, April 21th, 2009: Sienna, Italy

Sienna lies at the southern edge of Tuscany, so we started enjoying the rolling, verdant hills of that region. The valleys were usually either pastures or cultivated fields with some kind of grain crops, but the tops of the hills were generally wooded with dark cypresses or evergreens and other trees that were just leafing out in the bright, yellow-green shade that only occurs in the early Spring. On the slopes in between we often saw vineyards, olive groves, pastures, or what looked like tree farms for the paper industry, our guide said.

In Tuscany, farmhouses, castles, convents, churches, and entire towns were scattered from the valley bottoms to the very tops of the hills. The buildings were almost always in various shades of yellow, ocher, dark orange, or other earth tones that beautifully complemented the green of the forests and pastures. It was a truly unique and beautiful landscape, but the lady in front of me (from Kenosha, Wisconsin!) pointed out how many of the homes were uninhabited. Sure enough, if I looked very closely at the houses we passed there were a surprising number with no glass in the windows, a sure sign of disuse, and some had pieces of roof missing or other signs they were uninhabited. That was surprising and I don't have any idea what was causing it or even if my observations were skewed in some manner to create an illusion of uninhabited houses in Tuscany.

We stopped for the night in Sienna and checked into Hotel Italia, which was a curious place indeed. We had a chair in our bedroom, but only a hole in the bathroom floor surrounded by a curtain for a shower. Lois and Phyllis had a bathroom with a real tub, but not a single chair in their bedroom to sit on. A large floor fan was standing in a corner of our bedroom, apparently in lieu of air conditioning, and heat was apparently supplied by hot water and radiators. I say apparently because the heat had already been turned off for the spring season, which my sisters found out when they tried to warm up their room! Our bedroom, on the other hand, was way too hot even though the heat was turned off, so we had to cool it off by opening the window. On the plus side, the open window afforded us a magnificent view out over the city to the Tuscan hills beyond. On the minus side, our window had no screens but fortunately it was too early in the spring for many bugs. So if you ever check into the Hotel Italia in Sienna, you might want to first examine your room to see if its amenities and temperature match your preferences!

After shopping at a small grocery store just down the street from the rear entrance of the hotel, we ate a bit and then started walking toward the old section of Sienna just down the street from Hotel Italia. After passing the first big archway marking the outer boundary of the old section, we came across a pizzeria that had fresh-backed goods on display. So Monika had a slice of fresh pizza with sliced tomatoes on top and I had a double-crust pizza with prosciutto and mozzarella to complete our evening meal. Munching on that we continued through a triple archway marking the remaining section of the old city wall into the old section of town.

Once in the old section of Siena, we followed the main shopping street into the heart of town where the central square, cathedral, and so forth are all located. Most of the shops were modern boutiques selling various upscale wares, but along the way we found some other curious things like a statue of the wolf that fed Romulus and Remus, the mythological twins that founded Rome, and a building that had the heads of men used kind of like gargoyles on a Gothic church. But the building was clearly not a church and the heads looked secular rather than sectarian, and each one was clearly distinct and modeled apparently after some real-life person. I never found out the story behind those heads, but there must be one so if you find out drop me a line.

On our return leg we met Lois and Phyllis, so we turned around and walked with them back to the central town square. In this case, however, the town "square" is shaped roughly like the shell of a clam or an oyster. Nine different pie-shaped sections radiate out from a central point in front of a large building (city hall, maybe?). This curious central plaza is a holdover from the Middle Ages and still is used to host a knock-down, drag-out type of horse race each year. Each horse is sponsored by one of the 11 major families in Sienna, and preliminary races during the year determine the final set of 9 competing horses. The final race is in a rough circle around the outside rim of the central plaza, and I guess the winner has bragging rights for the next year. Folks seem to take that race very seriously, however, and our guide informed us that seats to see it cost around 1,000 Euros!<

Lois and Phyllis settled into a restaurant at one side of the plaza that had been recommended by our guide for their dinner, and we meandered our way back to Hotel Italia, passing the imposing but closed cathedral and taking some of the side streets just for fun. I found a motor scooter dealer but unfortunately it was closed because I really wanted to go in and check the prices of the used scooters that they had on sale. There are so many scooters being using in Italy that there must be a thriving market for used ones, and I would like to tap into that market to purchase one for taking a driving tour of Italy some day. But boy were we footsore, weary, and ready to go to bed by the time we walked back to our idiosyncratic hotel room!