Siena

Amid cold and rainy weather, we traveled by bus from Perugia to another hillside town in Umbria called Siena. It’s a well-preserved, medieval city in the Tuscany region. The Piazza del Campo is a novelty in Italy – it’s a shell-shaped piazza (plaza). On one side of the piazza is a 289-foot bell tower, the Torre di Mangia. I’m writing this post 3 days after climbing to the very top of the bell tower and my calves are still sore, but the climb was so worth the view! After taking in the city from this bird’s eye view, we went back down to the piazza and hung out for a bit eating gelato and admiring the Fonte Gaia (Fountain of Joy). All around the piazza are restaurants and pottery shops. Several regions in Italy have their own trademark style of pottery painting and one of my favorites is of bright yellow lemons that is common to the Tuscan region. They also paint lots of sunshines too! The Duomo in Siena is an enormous black and white stone cathedral that construction begun on in 1150. Unfortunately, they still aren’t quite done yet and the cathedral was wrapped in canvas and scaffolding.

The hilly region of land between Siena and Florence is known as Chianti. For those of you who are red wine lovers, this is the Garden of Eden! Some of the best wines of Italy are produced in the Chianti region and bear the same name. I had a so-so dinner in Siena that was more than made up for by the excellent Chianti Classico that accompanied it. Maybe I was just being too hard on the restaurant since I had just experienced Tita and Nonie’s cooking! The olive oils and wines in this region make a simple afternoon ritual of a drink and snack before dinner a dining experience all its own, so dinner itself wasn’t a total loss.