Siena for a Day

 

 



The shell-shaped Piazza

October 27, 2015

Siena for a Day



Today, we boarded the high-speed train to Florence from Naples and then got on a regional train to Siena. We arrived a little after 14:30 (2:30 pm US time). We finally figured out how to get to where we wanted to leave our luggage and started exploring Siena. The old section of Siena is another charming old town filled with hilly, winding, narrow cobblestone streets. In the center is a huge shell-shaped piazza surrounded by restaurants and shops. Of course there is a huge Duomo and several other large churches and museums.

City Hall in the Piazza

One thing that we did see, which didn’t seem to fit in with the historical character of the town, were a number of “Chubby Women” sculptures by the artist, Xu Hongfei, which were very funny to look at, but I don’t know how appropriate they really were. The sculptures are traveling through cities all over the world. We did join one of them for a picture, however.

In front of the Duomo



If you are a shopper, this would be paradise for you, other than the prices are a bit steep. We roamed around and window shopped a little, took pictures and then went to pick up our bags and found our Airbnb for the night.

With one of the chubby ladies

The place we are staying is a very contemporary apartment. The owner is out of town, so his friend met us, gave us instructions, and left. We walked to a mall near the train station and got something to eat, not necessarily Italian. We are getting a little tired of a daily diet of all things Italian, not that we don’t love their food. Actually, they have quite a lot of Indian and Middle Eastern places here to eat but we thought that since we were here, we should eat Italian. After you have lived and traveled overseas, you realize how fortunate we are to live in a country where many cuisines are available to us and we can have a huge variety in our eating. In many countries, the same ingredients are used in varying ways to make their food . . . especially the spices and it gets a bit boring. We then stopped at a local grocery to stock up for breakfast and travelling tomorrow. One thing that we found here that we really like is their porchetta (spiced pork roast with the skin on so it becomes crackling . . . takes us back to our Jamaica days where they do a similar thing with pork roast). It is so yummy, even cold, and the crackling is out of this world, if done right.

A very hilly city

One of Ten

On an interesting side note, to get out of the train station and up to the street where we needed to be, we had to take a series of 10 escalators, three of which each equaled four flights of stairs. Remember, I said that this was a hilly town. I guess they figured if they wanted tourists to come, they better help them along a bit.  Once you are in the old town, you just go up and down hills . . . no escalators.

It’s been an enjoyable day, but my right leg is talking to me and saying that, “Isn’t this a bit much?” Only two more days before we leave, but tomorrow we head to Pisa for a few hours, enough to lean with the tower and see a church or two and then on to Vernazza a little town in the Cinque Terra (a series of five little towns) region of Italy, right on the sea, where you can do hiking. However, it is supposed to rain all day tomorrow, so I think, our hike might be in jeopardy. We will see.

Until the next time. Talk to you in a while.

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