August 6

Our day was primarily a travel day. We met up with our new friends from the night before and made it as far as Pisa before we broke down and bought some fries at a McDonalds. No, we didn't see the leaning tower, but all the other buildings seemed askew. The only real excitement came each time I put on or took off my backpack. My sunburned back made my shirt feel more like sandpaper than cotton and the pack itself had somehow gotten heavier since leaving North Bend. I wonder how that happened...

We got to Sienna around 3pm, figured out the train schedule to Rome and hopped a bus for the hotel, but the bus got us only remotely close and since we thought we'd get closer we stayed on board and did the whole circuit. Oops. We figured out when the bus got the closest to our hotel and hopped off at that point. We hiked up the hill into town in the heat of the day. By the time we found it we were very ready to drop the packs.

The hotel was odd, taking up just a single floor of a building. Our room was small, but had a bathroom and a stunning view of the Duomo in old Sienna.

We freshened up a bit before heading out onto the streets with our new friends. Between the three of them I was seriously outclassed as a shopper. Dan likes pens, suits, and luggage. Serena has wide interests, but seemed to focus on jewelry while Amy was intent on a platter.

We found a gelateria, though not as good as a in Vernazza, the TI in Il Campo (the civil square), and an Internet cafe where I was able to buy yet another pre-paid access card good only at this shop and in towns where I'll never go. I've got quite a collection now. We also made it up to the top of the hill to the Duomo, the big gothic cathedral in Sienna, and did a quick visit, but left hoping to come back later.

Back at the hotel we made reservations at one of the better restaurants in town according to our guide books. It was small with perhaps a dozen tables in total, but at least that many people tending them. We actually had <gasp> cloth napkins and tablecloth, a candle, and sparkling wine on the house to start. In case you haven't picked it up, this was a far cry from our typical pizza or meat-on-a-pole we'd become accustomed to.

We ordered another bottle of sparkling wine (WARNING! WARNING!) and got some hors d'oeurves on the house as we struggled to decide what to order. I wound up with an onion flan for starters, pasta with lamb ragout for my first course, and fillet of beef for my second. All this was accompanied by a bottle of red.

The flan was ok, but probably not something I'd order again. The pasta, however, was spectacular and probably the best thing I've eaten on the trip. The beef and green beans were also good, though not quite as good as that I'd had in the Cotswolds so long ago. The compliment for each course was a bottle of Italian Brunello which was exceedingly smooth and easy to drink. Of course, this might have been due to all the sparkling wine we'd already had.

We passed on dessert, but they brought us some bite-sized pastries anyway. I wasn't planning on eating them, but after I drank the grappa they brought I needed something to cleanse my mouth. Grappa is apparently the highest alcohol content drink that can be extracted from a grape. In other words, it's rocket fuel. I think I also finished Amy's lemoncella which seemed to be akin to lemon-flavored vodka. Quite honestly, the rest of the night was a bit fuzzy, though I suffered no ill effects the next morning. I guess I'm just lucky that way.

August 7

We ate breakfast on the patio atop the hotel which was a major selling point of the hotel, no surprise given the amazing views. The food was also pretty good, typically letting us put off lunch until the middle of the afternoon.

We saw most of the sites of Sienna including Il Campo where the horse races are held, a movie about the horse races which was surprisingly good, the civic museum which was filled with spectacular frescoes, the museum of bits that came out of the Duomo, and of course, the Duomo itself.

The Duomo was built almost 1,000 years ago and was the Sienese way of flipping the finger to their rivals in Florence. Although small, it has an enormous dome at the cross with gold stars on a dark blue background inside. It was painted with perspective in mind so the stars get smaller as they get higher. The end result was a dome that appeared to be mammoth in scale and quite inspiring.

From the Duomo museum we headed up narrow, tight stairs to the lookout above the Duomo. Before the plague struck Sienna they planned to create the world's largest cathedral. What stands today as the Duomo was to be only the transept. The lookout we stood upon was destined to be the far wall and from there you can see marks on the square's floor and other buildings which would have been part of the finished church had the Black Death not decimated the population.

We had a picnic of fruits and breads on the hotel's terrace before heading back into the winding streets. Dan and I stepped into a wine-tasting bar to get me a bit of an education describing wines. I found I really liked a drier wine like the pinot gris from the north of Venice and a light chianti classico from the area between Sienna and Florence. Eventually the girls found us and dragged us off to get dinner.

We ended the day back up at the Duomo listening to a Jazz concert dedicated to Miles Davis. He's never been a real favorite of mine, but the band did play a jazzy version of Bolero which was at least interesting. Unfortunately, it devolved into fusion jazz so we headed back to the hotel to crash.

August 8

We started on the terrace again with a traditional Italian breakfast before catching a cab to the car rental place. Dan and Serena had reserved a car long ago and offered to drive us around the hill country of Tuscany.

Dan had a book that showed all the vineyards so we were hoping to find one that would give us a tour. Unfortunately, few of the wineries were came across were in the book and none of those were open for tasting. To make matters worse, the curvy roads through the Tuscan hills made both Amy and Serena sick and I wasn't feeling too keen myself.

We bailed on the whole idea of finding a winery and instead headed to the town of Oreveto via a major highway to lessen the carsickness factor. In spite of the tight roads, we did get to see what I had always thought of as Tuscany.

Oreveto was another hilltop town, though technically in Umbria rather than Tuscany. Their Duomo was black and white striped like the Duomo in Sienna, but much simpler. It was very much a working church and very charming.

We left the church and found a shop that had a style of platter that we really liked. The platters had real leaves sort of stuck to it. Not so much a serving platter as an art piece. The one we liked most was the most expensive, of course, so we started looking at other pieces we liked. We almost didn't buy anything, but in the end got the proprietor's "special discount" thanks to some rather unintentional haggling. The owner thought we were playing him all along and even gave us a traditional "finger to the eye" gesture which means he's watching us. Oh well, if it was such a bad deal for him he wouldn't have sold it to us.

We grabbed a gelati before heading for Civita, a town destined to fall from its perch in the near future. Only 15 people live there now as the earth below it erodes away. The views are great, but especially from a private garden at the far end. We were invited in by an elderly lady who even shot pictures for us. On the way out, though, she demanded payment which sort of ruined the whole affair.

After a fair number of misdirections, but missing only one exit, we got back to Sienna in time for dinner. We were enormously tired and although Amy's sound asleep she rolled over as I was finishing up the journal entry to say "you understand we don't have it zipped up," which pretty much sealed our last night in Sienna.

Tomorrow we head toward Florence with Dan and Serena before heading down to Rome.