Siena

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Geo: 43.3187, 11.3305

Today was Siena. A rather nice town, certainly better than San Gimignano but no Florence. Much bigger than we expected, yet again not close to Florence. New information for us Siena was a bitter rival and equal of Florence for 400 years, and defeated them in at least two major battles. Eventually Siena succumbed, thus it is a bit of a time warp for us today. Bad for them, good for us.

We know this will profoundly surprise all of you, but the primary attractions here, this being a medieval town, are churches. We have seen better and worse. Bird is a bit more impressed with the churches than HP (suppose he is upset there was nothing Roman in town).

Everything here was medieval. Even after the Renaissance, they continued to paint two dimensional in Siena.

Tomorrow we vacate Italy. It is bitter sweet. Southern Italy is beautiful, and even some of the people. We stood in line with a twenty something from, of all gritty places, Naples, who was very enjoyable to converse with. However, for the most part they strike us as less refined, as if we are, than the northern Europeans. Seems when the center of power left the Mediterranean during the middle medieval period so did sophistication.

Northern Europe clearly does not possess the history of the Mediterranean, yet it is vibrant, cultured and more orderly. None of the crazy stuff of Naples or the Amalfi Coast. Even the girl from Naples agrees about this.

We, at least HP, reluctantly say goodbye to all that was Rome. Wasn't it amazing that before modern communication one person could command the majority of the civilized world? And indeed, while the Rome that enthralls us was only one or two per cent of the population, the rest being slaves or something close, it was markedly superior than that which followed.

See you from Innsbruck, Austria.

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Comments

[Mike]

You still have to go right by Romeo & Juliette's castles ( 11 km past Vicenza) between Vicenza & Verona . And the Roman arena in Verona where your relatives once had lunch with the lions ( they were the entree). Both are a should s
ee and won't take but a couple of hours each if you are still in Italy.