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Published: January 19th 2007
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Duomo
From the tower After dealing with all the hassles of Rome, I was happy to be on my way to somewhere smaller and quieter. Siena fit the bill perfectly, but first we had to get there.
Our train left Termini station about 10 minutes late at just after 9 in the morning. We had tried to secure reservations for the train, but the agent insisted that we did not need them, and so going off my previous experiences I figured we'd be ok. We ended up getting on one of the last cars on the train and it was one of the older compartment cars. We found a couple of empty seats in two different compartments and sat down. Patience was thrown out of her seat with mom almost immediately so she came and joined me. When the train finally got underway it looked like we might be in the clear, but it didn't take long for 5 teenage guys to show up and throw us, and two other people in the compartment, out of our seats. I wasn't happy, but there really wasn't anything we could do and so we moved to the end of the carriage to spend the ride standing.
Of course, the teenagers weren't content to spend the next couple hours sitting peacefully in their seats. No, they promptly moved into the already packed corridor. Then they got out the beer and started smoking (there are signs forbidding it). They were making an enormous racket, too, and it didn't take long for people in the neighboring compartments to complain. It did little good, though, since the conductors were nowhere to be found for the first hour of the trip. When they finally did come through, they didn't say a word to the kids, but just pushed on past. This of course frustrated me to no end, but I got really pissed off when the snack cart came along. Imagine for a second a cart that is barely wide enough to fit down the empty aisle being pushed along with people packed into the corridor. Then, add to that, the need to stop every 10 feet because someone wanted to buy more beer. This would not have been allowed to happen in Germany. Period. But Italy plays by its own rules and you just have to go with the flow I guess. Anyway, we managed to get off at the
right stop and switch trains for Siena and the second half of the trip was much more pleasant.
Now, normally, I do quite well navigating as long as I have an accurate map. Unfortunately for us, I tried to use the Florence map to get us from the train station to the hotel in Siena. Oops. Lets just say there was a lot of walking, mostly in the wrong direction, before we gave up and hopped on a bus. To make matters worse, we didn't pay for the bus because you have to buy the ticket in advance from a tobacco shop and you cannot get it on the bus. Who came up with that brilliant idea? We got lucky and didn't run into any fare inspectors, but it's not like we were trying to skip paying purposely...they just wouldn't let us pay! So, it took us a bit longer than expected to get to the hotel, but we made it and settled in before heading off to the duomo.
Now, Patience is the architecture expect and this church was one of the top things on her list. It's famous (and rightly so) for the zebra-like appearance of
Siena
Looking our over Siena it's stripes which show up inside as well (unlike the one in Florence). It really is a magnificent sight, and I think it's one of my favorite churches of the entire trip. After checking out the duomo, we grabbed a late lunch at a pizza place before heading back to the hotel.
Around 9 we went to a tiny restaurant with a glowing recommendation in the Rick Steeves book. It was packed with locals at shared tables, and the food turned out to be fairly decent. I was a bigger fan of the house wine, though, which was fantastic and cheap. That was about it for our evening.
The next morning we got up around 930 and caught the end of the free breakfast before heading over to the central plaza. The plan was to climb the large tower attached to the town hall and so that's what Patience and I did. The weather was perfect, and the stunning views extended well into the countryside. Eventually we had to come down and met up with mom. We scouted out a laundromat and then headed back to the hotel to get the laundry. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and enjoying the pretty little town before grabbing some more pizza (yum) for dinner.
The next morning we had a small Christmas and had breakfast before catching a cab to the train station to head to our final destination together.
Stay tuned for Florence.
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