Siena

My sister Susan and I took a bus from Florence to Siena, and after a bit of a walk from the bus station to the hotel (located next to Il Campo - the city's famous piazza, as seen in the photo on the left), had time to rest up before dinner. Just as I sat down on the bed in my room, I heard drums, tambourines, and shouts from a large procession marching right under my window. When we turned the keys in at the front desk as we left for dinner, we asked the desk clerk what it was all about.  He told us it was a neighborhood group cheering on the team that would represent them in Siena's semi-annual horse race, which pits each neighborhood against each other in a horse race around Il Campo.  Amazingly enough, they made another parade through the neighborhood at 12:30 A.M., on a Thursday night no less, two months before the event. Do they do this every night, or every Thursday night? I admire their enthusiasm, but don't they have jobs?  Do they just show up late every morning? So many questions, so few answers.

My friends Darrel and Linda recommended a B and B with a restaurant downstairs that they stayed at in Siena years ago, and that is where we headed for dinner.  Darrel told me that the owner started drinking wine in the morning and continued through the evening, closing the restaurant when he felt it was time to call it a night.  It was located just off Il Campo, right behind Siena's City Hall Tower (seen in the photograph on the right), and I must say it was a really nice, low-key place to eat.  There was only one other table occupied - a large group of locals - and as far as I could tell, the owner (most likely the son of the previous owner) waited on the tables and the wife did the cooking, a truly local establishment.  The food was very good, and the dinner was the cheapest one we had while in Europe.  Once we finished dinner, they locked the place up behind us.  Evidently it did not cater to the late night crowd.  We walked back across the piazza to the hotel, passing locals and tourists just sitting  down on the bricks of Il Campo and enjoying the nice evening.  A beautiful, laid-back town free of tourist groups.  I wonder how they possibly missed the place?

The next day we walked through Siena's picturesque streets to it's famous Duomo.  For once, there were no huge crowds of tourists to maneuver through, and so we could take our time enjoying the artwork and architecture.  Siena was a major rival of Florence, but in 1348 the Black Plague killed off a third of the population, and then it was conquered by Florence in the 1500s, leaving it a medieval backwater, and thus preserving it as a living medieval city today. My sister Susan did not feel like climbing to the roof of the Duomo, or for that matter even the City Hall Tower, from which are spectacular views of the city and nearby countryside, and so we checked out of the hotel to catch the bus to Rome.  After buying the tickets, I was told that the bus would be leaving from the train station, and that is was just a short walk away. We elected to take a bus there instead, and it took 20 minutes.  It seems that Europeans have a much different definition of a "short walk" than Americans.  I imagine their idea of a long walk would be to Rome (which took 3 hours by bus).  No wonder they all seem so healthy.