Siena, Italy

This town came highly recommended from family and friends. After wandering around it was easy to see why. Siena is an old medieval town at the top of a large hill. Surrounding the entire town are large brick walls (hundreds of years old) which only allow several entries/exits through Portas (gates) around town. This is an easy day trip for those based in Florence, so you’ll often find many tourists from about 11-5 each day. We quickly realized this and found our favorite pastime in Siena – hanging out in the town center. Our first morning in Siena we found a table at a sidewalk café. Seated near us were a half-dozen Sienese men reading their papers and conversing about their Christmas holiday. It was awesome. As we looked up past the café we noticed many different groups of locals doing the same thing – just chatting, catching up, gossiping, etc. Our time at these sidewalk cafes (we continued the next 2 days for shorter stretches) accounted for the best people watching over the past few months…

We kept our momentum up from Florence of minimizing the tourist sights while in Siena. The Duomo/Baptistry/Crypt is a must do when visiting Siena for more then a few hours. We planned carefully on our last day and beat the crowds on a cloudy day. Once again the artwork and architecture astonished us despite visiting several similar exhibits through different towns. There was an additional fort inside the city walls (and the soccer stadium), neither of which were nearly as impressive as the churches and town square. In July and August Siena hosts the Il Palio – a famous horse race dating back hundreds of years. We learned about one unique part of Il Palio, the sidewalk cafes we frequented make for excellent seats as the race is actually in the center of town. We have friends who have attended and after spending so much time here you could see how much fun it would be.

Our intent in Siena was to spend most of the time in the countryside and spend a few days in town. Due to some logistical errors (ie a bad property rental experience), we ended up in a hotel for a few days. As it turned out the “country villa” rented for the week could not have been closer to the train station and required you to walk through the loading dock of the grocery store. To put it mildly, it wasn’t quite the Tuscany experience we had heard so many people rave about over and over… After a little effort we found a hotel and looked for another area in Tuscany that might lead us closer to the true “Tuscan experience”.

For some more photos of our time in Siena click here…