A new land speed record in Italy!

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Since we saw what we wanted to in Florence, we decided to use our last day there to take a day trip. Neil and Amy headed to Pisa, while I decided to see if I could get to both Siena and San Gimignano in a day. It was a day of transportation challenges.

The first thing Neil and Amy encountered was a rail strike. Since service was severely reduced, they had to wait hours for a train to Pisa that wasn't canceled, and when one did show up, it was jam packed with other people who had also been waiting around for hours.

I took the bus. Not because I was trying to avoid the rail strike we were only vaguely aware of, but because there is no rail line to San Gimignano.

I had it all planned out. I would go to San Gimignano in the morning, see it rather quickly (since it's very small) and spend the afternoon in Siena before returning to Florence in the evening. Good plan. So I bought a ticket at the bus station to San Gimingano, and got on the bus number that I was told to get on.

And we were off, rolling down the Italian expressway. I didn't know which stop to get off at, but knew that I was looking for a Tuscan hill town with giant towers. Should be easy... except I never saw one. Apparently I was supposed to get off somewhere and change buses.... nuts.

Conveniently, however, the final destination of this bus was Siena, so I just rode the rest of the way while I mentally reversed my plan for the day.

Siena is a really cool city. it's still heavily touristed, but not completely overrun like Florence. The Duomo there is incredible! The highlight is probably Donatello's marble floors. The Duomo is not as big as the one in Florence, but it's got a lot more going on inside.

Apparently, back in the day, Florence and Siena were rival towns of about equal size. They were constantly competing, and were constantly upgrading their Duomo's to try and outclass the other town's. Then the plague hit Siena and wiped out half of the population, and it never really recovered while Florence continued to grow into the larger city that it is today.

After touring around Siena at a pretty blistering pace, I grabbed a quick bite to eat at a Pizzeria and went to see if I could take a bus to San Gimignano. Unfortunately for me, while I had dodged a rail strike, I couldn't dodge Sunday. There weren't so many buses today... The next one was at 4pm. So I had to wait around for about three hours for it, which meant I got some more time to hang out in Siena.

So I did a bunch more walking around... only at a much slower pace. I wanted to find a place where I could get a good view of the old town. There was a large church on the top of a hill, and I figured there would be a great lookout from up there. I was half right. There was a large hedge blocking the entire view (why?), but there was a gate that led to some kind of brick utility shed on the hillside.

While a locked gate would ordinarily prevent me from going somewhere, this particular "gate" was three feet high. And I was actually able to squeeze between the gate and the neighbouring hedge without significant difficulty. I hopped up on the brick utility shed and stood up on the concrete roof. It was a great view! And, since nobody could see me thanks to the giant hedge, I got to enjoy it alone. I sat there for about two hours, took some pictures, read a book, and generally relaxed.

I successfully caught the bus and successfully changed buses where I was supposed to, so I was comfortably on my way to San Gimignano... finally!

San Gimignano is known as the Manhattan of Italy. This is the result of a "keeping up with the Joneses" mentality that was all the rage a few hundred years ago. The cool thing to do was to build a stone tower on top of your house, as tall as you could, hopefully making it taller than all of your neighbours to show off your wealth. Unfortunately, many failed to show off their knowledge of structural engineering as only 13 of the 72 towers still stand today. It's still neat.

Somewhere along the bus ride to San Gimignano, I started to get a little concerned. Considering how spotty the bus service seems to have been so far this Sunday, I couldn't see it getting better in the evening....

So when I arrived in San Gimingano (at 5pm) and made my way to a tourist office to try and determine how I was going to get back to Florence. They handed me a schedule and circled the next bus.... which was also the last bus... at 8:20pm. OK, that gives me three hours in San Gimignano (plenty of time) and then I'll head back to Florence.

But Italy is pretty laid back, and there is a difference between a bus being scheduled to show up and actually showing up at all. Since it was the last bus, I was modestly nervous. So I did what any lone traveler in Italy would do in my situation: I got a pizza and a bottle of wine.

Let me tell you, it smoothed things over very nicely. I sat outside the city walls on the hilltop and looked out over the Tuscan hills while I ate my pizza and drank my wine. By the end of it, I really wasn't to concerned if the bus came or not, as long as there would be a place where I could buy more wine. It wouldn't get THAT cold at night, right?

Well, just so I didn't take any unnecessary chances, I made my way to the bus stop a little early and waited around. The good news is the bus did show up, but since I had to catch a connecting bus along the way to actually get back to Florence, I was not in the clear yet.

I got off the bus where I needed to and waited for the bus to Florence.... and waited.... and waited.... a lot of time was passing by here, and I was starting to wonder if the bus I was waiting for was going to come at all. I wasn't worried though (remember, I had a bottle of wine and a pizza in me). The bus wasn't supposed to come for a while, but just in case it didn't, I started to go through some options:

1) Hitchhike - Not speaking Italian would make this a real challenge
2) Go door to door - Someone might eventually let me sleep on their couch?
3) Walk back to Florence - I think it's only 20km away and I could walk that in about 4-5 hours, or run it in ... except that I just remembered that Florence is something like 60km away, so that takes this idea from ridiculous to impossible.
4) Sleep at the bus station - I wouldn't be the first one, I'm sure.
5) Sleep in the woods - If it's illegal to sleep in a public place, they can't arrest me if they can't find me.
6) Stay up all night - This would allow me to avoid being mugged and/or arrested. Bonus.
7) Have more wine

I never really made up my mind, figuring I would instead cross that bridge when I got to it. But I was leaning toward a combination of #6, #3, and #7. If I'm going to be up all night, I might as well do something productive like try to walk back to where all of my stuff is (plus Neil and Amy, who would probably be wondering where I was), and wine seems to make any situation better. Acutally, I was beginning to look forward to this adventure.

But then the bus showed up. Dammit.... I mean... awesome. It's probably better that I'm not going to be stuck in a town that I don't even know the name of and try to make my way back to Florence which is 60km (probably closer to 70km) away by expressway, while drunk on wine. Instead I had a 50 minute bus ride to look forward to, and a late arrival time of 11:05pm... or so I thought.

You see, as far as I can tell, the bus driver was a former formula one driver who couldn't quite cut it, so he decided to drive buses in central Italy. On the eastbound side of the four lane divided expressway, he spent the majority of the journey either passing cars or driving down the center of the two lanes in order to make it easier to pass other cars regardless of what lane they were in. It also allowed him to easily take the inside of any corner, and since it was dark it was harder to anticipate what lane that would be.

He took a 50 minute bus ride on an expressway where the speed is presumably somewhere around 120km/h on a typical day and knocked a shocking 20 minutes off of the journey! I don't want to do the math to try and figure out what his average speed must have been because I don't want to cause you to retroactively fear for my safety. So just remember, I had a bottle of wine and I was worried about a thing.

I got off the bus in awe of the skill, fearlessness of the driver. "Thanks for the ride Mr. Andretti!"

I didn't say that, but I probably should have.

I returned to the hostel and explained to Neil and Amy "Where the hell (I'd) been".... I'd do it all again.

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Photos

Siena
Hop a fence, climb a shed, and this is what you get.

Inside the Duomo
Incredibly intricate design.

Another view over Siena
I wish I had more time to spend in this town.

Tuscany
Ah, ok. I get it now.

Some food, a bottle of wine, and a view
This is what I like, right here.