Siena

There are numerous little towns with castles and magic throughout the hills of Tuscany.  

How does one choose which town to visit?

We decided to read through the tour books and tour into the most interesting sounding one.

We read that Siena was in competition with Florence "back in the day", and that they still have horse races in their town square.  Sounded awesome to us...

so off we went!

 We started calling everything "creepy Italian" this and "creepy Italian" that, from the scene in "Under the Tuscan Sun" when the main character's friend says that her baby will grow up around the creepy Italian trees, and will be a creepy Italian baby that says, "Ciao mama."  Long explanation (with too many commas) to simply say, these are the creepy Italian trees.

 View from the car on the way to Siena.  Nick really liked these fields.

 Foggy Tuscan hillside

 Siena was a lot larger than we had imagined.  We had to park below the city and take the city bus to the city center.  Thanks to the girl at the bus stop, we figured it all out...and made it here!  Note: If you ever find yourself in Siena, get there in the morning.  We were there around 9am and there were few tourists.  When we left later that afternoon, it was swamped.

 Creepy Italian birds.  Swarmed the towns like this every morning.

 That, my friends, is gelato.

 Of course I, being the vegetarian that I am, had to take a classic picture of the meat shop.  How funny is this one?  I thought it was hilarious with the wooden pig cut-out.

 Creepy Italian statue of kids suckling a wolf.  Brandon later told us the story of Romulus and Remus...then it all made sense.

 Sometimes we would be walking down pretty little streets, and then BOOM!  A gorgeous church would pop out of nowhere!

 Love the grey and white stripes.  Interested as to why that was a popular design.??  Anyone know?

 The inside of the duomo.  Reminded me of the perfect place to film a scene from "Alice in Wonderland."

 An example of the intricacy of the designs on the outside of the duomos.

 Me and the backside of a duomo.

 The classic "nun" picture.  This one was trying to "shoo" birds out of the church.

 This is where we ate lunch.  It was a cave with lots of medieval things in there.  The owners looked medieval, as well.  I was ready for the creepy medieval Italian bar fight, but we were the only people there.  Bummer.  

Sunset that night.  

LOVED Siena! 

We could tell that the town was more rough "back in the day" than the others that we had visited so far.  If you wanted to live there, you'd need a horse.  You'd need a sword.  You'd probably need a shield.  You'd need to be a creepy Italian medieval person who wouldn't mind a good creepy Italian fight.  Dig it.

Next up?  Day 2 of Montepulciano.  Just couldn't get enough!