Volterra

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Issy decides to sleep in, so I have breakfast on my own. The eggs were terrible yesterday, so I decide to have toast instead. There's a machine on the buffet that looks like it might be a toaster, but it's nowhere near the bread. That said, the milk's nowhere near the cereal, so maybe the staff just aren't into putting things in helpful places. I wait to see if someone else uses the machine as a toaster, or as anything else for that matter, but no one goes near it. I'm still not sure it really is a toaster, so I give up and have plain bread instead.

Issy's still asleep so I decide to go and climb my tower ration for today. We go to Pisa tomorrow, so I'm on a bit of a tower roll. The tower isn't open yet, so I climb a hill to look at the view and to kill some time. A thunderstorm starts, so I take shelter under a stone arch. The only other person here is a girl from Perth, and I'm glad she's an English speaker because the storm doesn't look like it's about to let up anytime soon. She tells me that she's working as an au pair for a family in northern Italy for a couple of months before going back home to start work as an accountant. She says that she got up at 6am and walked ten kilometres here from the next village. We’re finding it a bit hard to hear each other against the noise of the storm. The thunder's also making the ground shake and my soon to be accountant companion is looking decidedly nervous.

The Torre del Podesta, or Great Tower, is the tallest of San Gimignano's 14 remaining such structures. We've read that they were all built in medieval times by wealthy merchants and bankers who competed with each other to see who could build the tallest one. Its staircase is modern, wide and not too steep, and a far cry from the narrow medieval stairs in the towers I’ve climbed in the last two days. The views over the village and the surrounding Tuscan countryside are again spectacular, and enhanced by the cloud formations from the storm.

Issy's now awake, which is probably not all that surprising given the ear-piercing thunder. We set off for the town of Volterra which is about 30 kilometres west of here. We decide to leave the GPS at the hotel for its own protection, and rely on road signs instead. It's Saturday, and it feels like half of Italy has decided to come to San Gimignano. The traffic is jammed right up, and it takes us a long time just to get out of the village. It feels a lot more relaxing without the GPS telling us where to go, and because it's not on I don't feel the constant urge to tell it where to go. We pass a prison in a lovely secluded valley. We hope the inmates appreciate their surroundings.

The half of Italy that isn't in San Gimignano today seems to be in Volterra, and finding somewhere to park is proving to be somewhat of a challenge. It’s not helping that there's another thunderstorm in progress which is making it a bit hard to see, although on the bright side some of clouds are below us which makes for spectacular viewing. The town is on top of a steep hill, and perhaps unsurprisingly the only vacant car spot we can find is in the bottom of the deep valley below it. If we were at home we would have turned around long ago, but we’re not going to be back here anytime soon so we struggle up the steep and seemingly endless steps from the car park to the town. We hope it’s worth it.

We've read that Volterra is thought to have been originally established by the Etruscans, and there's been a settlement here since at least the end of the 8th century BC. It's very pretty, with lots of traditional narrow windy streets, ancient Etruscan ruins, and shops selling the alabaster for which it's apparently famous. We stop for lunch in a tree lined piazza with excellent views down into the valley where we’ve left our car. We wander on into the main square where a large crowd has gathered outside the town hall. It seems that a wedding's about to take place and we watch on as the bride emerges from her limousine to loud applause from the assembled masses. We hope she wasn’t hoping for a quiet ceremony away from the prying gazes of random tourists.

We pass a large, round and very spectacular looking ancient fort. I take some photos of it, and then walk up to the head of the long queue snaking down the hill from its entrance to try to get some information on its background. It seems that it's not actually a tourist attraction at all; it's a State Prison. I see a large sign warning that taking photos is strictly forbidden, punishable by imprisonment. I suggest to Issy that now might be a good time to leave, preferably as quickly as possible. The people in the queue certainly looked like tourists, but it seems they're really here to visit their imprisoned relatives. I wonder who thought it was a good idea to put a prison in the middle of a tourist town. I also begin to wonder whether Tuscany has a crime problem; that's the second prison we've seen today.

We have dinner in San Gimignano's main square, and then listen to a concert by a brass band in the square next door. It's idyllic personified yet again.

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