We just got back from a long, but great day in Siena. It was a bit touch and go in the beginning because I'm still not adjusted to this time zone so I went to bed at 3 and we were up at 7:30 - not a great start for sure! The train ride was hot and long and on top of that, the train station is 2 miles away from the city center in Siena, but we were confident we could figure out the buses. Well we were wrong, very very wrong. After watching many people hop on buses outside of the station we figured that they just had to go to the city center, I mean how could they not? Well again, we were wrong. We rode around on a bus for what I'm sure was only 15 minutes, but it felt like forever once we realized we were not going towards the center, and then decided to ride it back to the main train station. So let's try this again, shall we? By this point my blood sugar was low (Courtney is going to rue the day that she explained to me what that meant after I heard I had low blood sugar from my doctor. Now whenever I'm crampy I'm just going to blame it on the sugar...I CAN'T HELP IT! Though I don't think she'll let me get away with that for long...we'll see) So I was a couple minutes away from a mental breakdown and this is where Court jumped in, forced me to eat something and got us into a cab and on our way to the center!
It was a beautiful day and of course we went to Piazza del Campo first since it's the most famous part of Siena. Twice a year this is where they cover the Piazza with dirt and run a no-holds-barred bareback horse race around it. This is called the Palio and it is between the 17 contrade (neighborhood wards) of the city; the first race started in the 14th century, while the other race started in the 17th century. We missed the races as they are in the summer, but it's amazing to imagine all of that happening in the Piazza that seems way too small for a race of that magnitude!
We then headed to the Duomo and were trying every which way to get good pictures. The thing about Siena is that everything is so tall and narrow so it's very hard to get pictures that encompass everything we see. I guess we'll just have good mental pictures? We sat outside for a bit deciding whether to go in or not and I was trying to remember from when I came before if this was the Duomo that didn't have much inside, in which case it wasn't worth it. Thank god we decided to go in because I was wrong AGAIN! There is not one inch of space in that Duomo that is not painted, covered in marble facades, or has just random splashes of gold everywhere. It was incredible and even though I've seen it before, it was worth it seeing it again!
We then headed to Fortezza Mediccea where Italy's national wine museum is. It was a long hike, but totally worth it for the views of Tuscany we got. I mean, also it was a museum of WINE, c'mon...that in and of itself is worth it to see... Before we went in though we seriously did get some great pics of the Tuscan countryside and I'll try to just limit myself to a few on here and the rest I'll post on facebook.
Ok so back to this museum of wine...it was actually pretty cool, but a bit of a tease if you ask me. We went down into a big cellar with hundreds of bottles of wine that you can't drink. But they did give Courtney a scanner machine you just scan the bar code of any wine and an annoying british lady will tell you all about it...she had way too much fun with that thing. Then we went back upstairs and decided that we should enjoy some wine before moving on and had Prosecco. It was seriously the best Prosecco I have ever had and it was only 3 euros! We also got to enjoy it on a cute little terrace:
All in all it was a great day. We figured out how to take a bus back to Florence instead of having to find our way back to the train station, so at least we learned! We came back and stopped at a market literally up our street with, I think, the CUTEST old Italian man EVER! It was a tiny market and he literally just followed us around and helped us with our random choices. I also spoke to him only in Italian with more than just the regular, si/no, and Courtney said it was the best I've spoken so far! YAY! I'm learning :)
Right now we are fixing an antipasto of wine, buffalo mozzarella, and prosciutto and then are heading out on the town to meet up with our new friends! baci xoxo
Right now we are fixing an antipasto of wine, buffalo mozzarella, and prosciutto and then are heading out on the town to meet up with our new friends! baci xoxo
what's Prosecco? excellent blog post and pictures! i feel like im there. haha. keep it up. pace urself though, i dont want you to get burnt out. cuz then i wont have awesome posts to read =P. maybe im doing it wrong, but it used to take me literally 1.5 hours to write a post of that caliber.
ReplyDeletehave u ever heard an immigrant hater say, "THIS IS AMERICA. SPEAK AMERICAN!"? along those lines, i propose from now on, u write one paragraph in italian, or the very least one sentence. dont worry, we can always copy and paste into google translate =). ciao!
Hiya Jeff! Prosecco is basically Italian champagne since you can't call anything that doesn't come out of Chanpagne, France champagne. It's very bubbly and yummy!! Thanks for likin my blog! It's not hard for me to write since I basically just write it like I talk...I don't have enough patience to work on it for long. I'll try to add more Italian, though that will require more thinking! :)
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