Siena

There was Ice in the Barrel in the morning (my new band name!). Nonetheless, we set out with the promise of 58 degrees, but that would be much later after our warm car ride to Siena, only 16 kilometers away!

Siena is a small city with a population of about 55,000. It has many medieval walls, buildings, and castles, so it is a fairly popular tourist destination. Parking is a real issue, and if you accidentally drive into certain zones you can be fined. In Italy, much of the driving is monitored by sensors, even the speed limits. Just like running a toll in the USA, if you speed in Italy, they simply mail you the ticket.

We found a free parking lot but by 9:30 a.m. it was already full. We didn’t even risk it and just drove back to the Penny grocery store lot from the day before. No problem but it was a 30 minute uphill walk to the city. As Mike had pointed out though, we had had a couple easy days.

The walk through the suburbs so to speak was interesting. People had a laundry hanging outside right above the busy street. We learned that if there was a crosswalk you better cross because you are about to run out of sidewalk on that side of the road.

At the entrance to the medieval part of the city, you could imagine why they selected this spot. With a great view of all sides, the gateway was formidable.

It is a working city, however, and cars, buses, motorcycles, and people were hurrying to get to work on Tuesday, which was also trash collection day.

Twice a year in July and August the city holds the Palio di Siena, a traditional medieval horse race held around a huge piazza in the center of the city. We saw many photos of the race in store windows and the center of the Piazza del Campo was packed with people in the middle and horses with jockeys on their backs racing around the semi-circle. The picture at the top shows the piazza which all slopes down to the bottom middle, which is at the edge of the building below.

There are, of course, several beautiful churches and cathedrals in the city. I wandered into this one which was cold but welcoming.

The main cathedral in the middle of the city was in some ways a small replica of the Duomo in Florence, with the similar white and green marble. Once again the cold dry sky was showing off its vivid blue cloudlessness.

It’s hard to imagine living here, but you could see workers everywhere. One man was using a small backhoe to fix huge pavers in a street. Another was working on a very tall door in a café. Men were working on a project with the water system maybe, moving the manhole covers, as an elderly man with a cane watched their progress from the side of the street.

It was so warm we had lunch in our courtyard and took a long walk near our house. The farmers were working the fields again and we confirmed with our host that it was okay to hike in the nearby woods. We followed a gravel road quite a ways and came across an abandoned villa.

Even farther down the path we thought we saw the shimmer of a lake, but it turned out to be hundreds of solar panels hidden among the Tuscan woods. Italy is really making an effort to go green. They have to sort all their trash into plastic, glass, and paper, even here in the countryside.

Mike cooked dinner last night, more pasta tortellini of some sort. He pan-seared a steak for him and made chicken patties filled with cheese and tomato for me, but when we looked more closely at the packaging with google translate, it was “swino.” So I had my pork cheese tomato patty and we toasted to getting the house to 18 degrees. Mike swore he was feeling a breeze in the chilly bedroom and realized the window had been open the entire time! So the house should be much better today after another few hours of a blazing fire, floor heat, and sunshine 🙂