Siena

7th and 8th September 2009

Our train journey to Siena involved a bit of backwards travel towards Florence, but getting off about halfway at a place called Empoli and changing trains to get to Siena. We had given ourselves a 10 minute changeover time, and were a bit concerned about it, as most of the trains we've caught over here have been delayed or cancelled. We thought we'd risk it anyway. There was no dramas getting on the train at Pisa, and the journey was really nice. This was easily the nicest train we've been on - it beat the Eurostar one - the screens even told us how fast we we're travelling (The fastest I saw was 147km/h), and the temperature inside and outside. Luckily enough, it left on time and even arrived on time in Empoli. We had to change platforms to catch our connecting train, and we were there with 4 minutes before the train was due to arrive. Not surprisingly the connecting train was about 10 minutes late, and when it did finally arrive it was jam-packed. There were no seats and bags and people shoved into every available space possible. I eventually got a lady to move her suitcase so I could sit, but because she only moved her suitcase a total of 2 inches I had nowhere to put my legs, whilst trying to hold onto my case so it didn't fall into Dan's legs. After about 30 minutes of the train Dan eventually found himself a seat whilst I was starting to get cramps and pins and needles from not being able to move my feet and legs. We got off the train 60 minutes later, hot, tired and annoyed (well I was anyway) and we had to somehow find our accommodation with very little directions.

The directions to the accommodation were given as if you were coming from the town, not the train station that is a bit out of the city centre. Luckily in my organisation, I'd done a quick Google map of the place and wrote a few street names down to help us. Google maps reckoned it would take 21 minutes walking, so we were fine with that. An hour later, and we were at the top a hill still looking for our place. It was hot, and I was already s***ty so the conversation between Dan and I was very limited. We eventually found the place (Someone let John know that its on a street called Sciacca-pensiri), a camping ground, and it is spectacular. It's built into the side of a massive hill with heaps and heaps of space. We're staying in a cabin type thing, which isn't big enough to swing a cat in, but it's fine for us. There's a lovely swimming pool right outside our door and a nice little table and chairs out the front too. We dropped our bags and sat outside for half an hour to cool down. We made a plan to head into the city and find some lunch for me (Dan had eaten the Panini I bought for breakfast and didn't like). We caught a bus into town and began to wander the little streets of Siena. We found the main part of the city, Il Campo, a big palace type thing. Lonely planet described it as a washing basin, with Il Campo being the taps. The whole piazza is exactly like that, a big dish, with a plughole at the bottom - there really is no other way to describe it. Apparently twice a year they fill all the edges up with dirt and have a big horse race - tickets are hundreds of Euros each, and even then it's difficult to see, although it also televised on the national TV network. All I wanted for lunch was a cheese and ham foccacia or a Panini, but after an hour or so I couldn't find one so I gave up on lunch. We didn't achieve much else that afternoon, so we stopped in at the supermarket for some breakfast stuff, coke and 70 cent massive bottles of beer. I'm still struggling to believe that even in a supermarket coke is more than twice the price of beer. We got back to the camping grounds around 5 and decided to go for a swim. By this time the pool was completely covered in shade and it was quite cold. We still ended up spending an hour in there and I came out with wrinkly fingers and toes. After we'd showered and dried off we headed up to the pizzeria that is on the camping grounds. We ordered some pizzas to take away and came back and sat outside and ate them with the mozzies. We watched a bit of stuff on the laptop then called it a night

After an incredibly decent sleep in until 11.30 (it's just so peaceful), we got up and enjoyed our fruit and yoghurt outside. I was a bit pissed that the grapes had seeds in them, but I'm always grumpy in the morning about one thing or another. We ended up getting into town at about 1, with a bit more of a clue as to how we were going to spend the day. The first stop was at the Duomo - cathedral - which as described in our Italy books as "One of the most spectacular churches in Italy", holy s*** they weren't wrong. The 800-year-old church was awesome. Paintings, statues and gold just covered the inside of the church. The solid marble floor was completely done in pictures and mosaics; I can't even start to describe it. Dan made the comment that this church must've been rich. He is getting good at stating the completely obvious. We bought an 'all-inclusive' ticket which gave us access to the Duomo, the Crypt, the Baptistery and the Museum with the panoramic terrace. So our second stop was the museum. We strolled through all the exhibits at our usual pace, and then made the climb up the façade to the very top. We had awesome views over the city and the surrounding mountains and wineries. Very textbook Tuscan and very beautiful! We headed down from the terrace and checked out the rest of the museum before heading out, and then into the crypt. We were glad we didn't bother paying to get into here, as most of it was roped off and we couldn't see much. Although it was cool to see that they had decorated the crypt with the same bright paint as they had in the Duomo upstairs. Apparently the crypt was only discovered about 15 years ago, which is kinda cool. The last stop on our ticket was at the Baptistery, which was underneath the Duomo, but still at street level because it was built onto a hill. I'm not entirely sure what the point of the baptistery is for (Maybe someone more religious than I can fill me in) but it was basically just a mini version of the church. Decorated and painted in the same style and colours.

After the 2 religious hours we'd just spent we decided to set off to find a late lunch. We headed back down to the washing basin, as there were many restaurants around the edge. We settled on a place, and after some very poor service I did something that I haven't done here yet - I ordered something I had no idea what it was. The only word in it I recognised was fettuccini, so I was hopeful. Our meals came out and mine was pasta with a massive lump of disgusting looking, smelly meat on top and Dan got some noodley type thing with mince meat in it. I took one bite of mine and almost threw up - it was gross. Dan switched plates with me, but his wasn't much better, I only could manage two or three forkfuls of his. Dan ate all the pasta off mine, but left the smelly meat, and then polished off his own. He ate it, but I don't think he liked it much either. I am positive that the meat on mine was horse, but I was too afraid to ask the waiter. After attempting lunch, I was still hungry so we picked up some gelati and made our way to the supermarket for more beer and coke and jumped on the bus back to the campgrounds.

I thought I'd better write the blog up now, as we're not catching a train to our next destination, we're going to be on a bus. Apparently to catch a train to Assisi we'd either have to go through Rome or Florence, making it an extremely long trip. There's only one bus each day, so lets hope we don't sleep in again and miss it. Dan's currently back up at the restaurant getting us some more pizza - it was so cheap and extremely convenient, so we thought we go for it again. Not sure when we'll have Internet again so there'll probably be three of four new blogs by then. Ciao!