Followed by 4 days in Siena.
A short and relatively cheap bus ride from our B&B brought us to the front of the main train station. This left us barely 200 yards to cover as opposed to the 1.6 km we covered when we walked the entire route last Friday.
The plan was to catch the 12:10 pm train to Siena but as it happened the 11:10 train was still at the station even though it was already 11:15. So a quick dash got us onto what appeared to be a very crowded train and we struggles to get through the crush of passengers and luggage surrounding the doors.
As it happened, the train wasn't anywhere near as full as we thought- just a bunch of anxious tourists making sure they didn't miss their (next) stop.
For some reason there are few stop announcements on many Italian trains and they are often indicifereable due to background noise etc.
Arriving at Siena shortly after 12:30 we exited the train and made our way to the town by way of seemingly endless series of escalators which kept going up and up and up for what seemed an eternity. Once we had reached the level of the old town we decided to walk the 1.5km to our hotel rather than chase around buying bus tickets and finding the right bus.
Once we entered the old city proper through a large entrance in the old city walls it was a slow incline over mostly cobbled streets that brought us towards our destination. Offline Google maps was virtually useless but we were able to find our hotel with just a little difficulty thanks to my CityMaps2Go app. The hotel I Tetti di Siena ( literally "the roofs of Siena") was just a short walk down a side street, Via del Paradiso. And after staying in some basic places for much of the trip, it really was "A Paradise" With a large room offering a fridge, kettle and a TV, the only thing missing was a microwave.
After our usual "shower and a quick change" I returned to the front desk. The clerk on duty provided us with a city map which he highlighted to show us the main routes and attractions as well as giving us tips on restaurants.
Our first stop was lunch at a crowded local diner Il Pulcino where we ate a couple of dishes of pici with salmon and tuna. Pici is the local spaghetti, made with just flour and water ( no egg) but it is very thick in diameter and quite tasty when cooked al dente.
After lunch we made a slow circuit of the town, our first stop being the Piazza del Campo, a large city square. It is more of an oval saucer shape than a square with a gentle slope to it that makes it an almost perfect amphitheatre. It is actually used twice annually for a horse race called the Palio,which pits riders from different contrades (wards)of the city. Held on July 2nd and 16th of August the horses are ridden bareback in a race that lasts barely 2 minutes but draws thousands of spectators.
From the Piazza we continued our journey along the main thoroughfare Via di Citta jauntily we arrived at the Piazza del Duomo, the square adjacent to the "duomo"- properly known as Cathedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Like every other cathedral in this country it was enormous, spectacular and was surrounded by hundreds of tourists.
We had already decided that Friday would just be a "walk around" so we didn't make any attempts to enter the cathedral or any of the adjacent structures.
With our basic overview of the town completed we returned to our hotel to plan the rest of our 4 day stay.
Dinner was at Trattoria Papei, a recommendation of our hotel. It's specialty is the local raised T-Bone steak which typically weighs in at 1.2kg and up, served no more than medium rare. We watched an adjacent couple tackling this project and decided instead to order lamb chops, a significantly smaller but more than adequate substitute.
Saturday morning I once again checked the price of Rolling Stones tickets in nearby Lucca. Obviously a highly scalped item, they were going for upwards of 400 euro a pair for standing room roughly 3/4 of the way across the piazza where the concert was being held. Not wanting to part with that much money we decided to stay in town to explore the cathedral and its adjacent structures.
After buying a multi entry ticket we lined up at the cathedral only to be reprimanded for being in the "FastPass" line instead of the regular "slow" line. We apologized, moved to the appropriate line and were immediately given access to the building by the same woman who had ejected us 30 seconds sooner.
Our visit lasted well over an hour and I would refer anyone who is interested in the details to research it themselves rather than listen to me regurgitate the same details as hundreds of other web descriptions. We did not bother to do the climb to the top of the dome, deciding to save any aerial views for another day. After leaving the cathedral we quickly visited the adjacent crypt which featured frescoes of the Passion before deciding to call it a day.
The plan was to catch the 12:10 pm train to Siena but as it happened the 11:10 train was still at the station even though it was already 11:15. So a quick dash got us onto what appeared to be a very crowded train and we struggles to get through the crush of passengers and luggage surrounding the doors.
As it happened, the train wasn't anywhere near as full as we thought- just a bunch of anxious tourists making sure they didn't miss their (next) stop.
For some reason there are few stop announcements on many Italian trains and they are often indicifereable due to background noise etc.
Arriving at Siena shortly after 12:30 we exited the train and made our way to the town by way of seemingly endless series of escalators which kept going up and up and up for what seemed an eternity. Once we had reached the level of the old town we decided to walk the 1.5km to our hotel rather than chase around buying bus tickets and finding the right bus.
Once we entered the old city proper through a large entrance in the old city walls it was a slow incline over mostly cobbled streets that brought us towards our destination. Offline Google maps was virtually useless but we were able to find our hotel with just a little difficulty thanks to my CityMaps2Go app. The hotel I Tetti di Siena ( literally "the roofs of Siena") was just a short walk down a side street, Via del Paradiso. And after staying in some basic places for much of the trip, it really was "A Paradise" With a large room offering a fridge, kettle and a TV, the only thing missing was a microwave.
After our usual "shower and a quick change" I returned to the front desk. The clerk on duty provided us with a city map which he highlighted to show us the main routes and attractions as well as giving us tips on restaurants.
Our first stop was lunch at a crowded local diner Il Pulcino where we ate a couple of dishes of pici with salmon and tuna. Pici is the local spaghetti, made with just flour and water ( no egg) but it is very thick in diameter and quite tasty when cooked al dente.
After lunch we made a slow circuit of the town, our first stop being the Piazza del Campo, a large city square. It is more of an oval saucer shape than a square with a gentle slope to it that makes it an almost perfect amphitheatre. It is actually used twice annually for a horse race called the Palio,which pits riders from different contrades (wards)of the city. Held on July 2nd and 16th of August the horses are ridden bareback in a race that lasts barely 2 minutes but draws thousands of spectators.
From the Piazza we continued our journey along the main thoroughfare Via di Citta jauntily we arrived at the Piazza del Duomo, the square adjacent to the "duomo"- properly known as Cathedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Like every other cathedral in this country it was enormous, spectacular and was surrounded by hundreds of tourists.
We had already decided that Friday would just be a "walk around" so we didn't make any attempts to enter the cathedral or any of the adjacent structures.
With our basic overview of the town completed we returned to our hotel to plan the rest of our 4 day stay.
Dinner was at Trattoria Papei, a recommendation of our hotel. It's specialty is the local raised T-Bone steak which typically weighs in at 1.2kg and up, served no more than medium rare. We watched an adjacent couple tackling this project and decided instead to order lamb chops, a significantly smaller but more than adequate substitute.
Saturday morning I once again checked the price of Rolling Stones tickets in nearby Lucca. Obviously a highly scalped item, they were going for upwards of 400 euro a pair for standing room roughly 3/4 of the way across the piazza where the concert was being held. Not wanting to part with that much money we decided to stay in town to explore the cathedral and its adjacent structures.
After buying a multi entry ticket we lined up at the cathedral only to be reprimanded for being in the "FastPass" line instead of the regular "slow" line. We apologized, moved to the appropriate line and were immediately given access to the building by the same woman who had ejected us 30 seconds sooner.
Our visit lasted well over an hour and I would refer anyone who is interested in the details to research it themselves rather than listen to me regurgitate the same details as hundreds of other web descriptions. We did not bother to do the climb to the top of the dome, deciding to save any aerial views for another day. After leaving the cathedral we quickly visited the adjacent crypt which featured frescoes of the Passion before deciding to call it a day.
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