Final Trip Photos

And here are the rest of the Siena photos that I wanted to share...

Siena's Main Square, Il Campo

Duomo interior - reminds me of a Dr. Seuss book

We spotted this through an open doorway on a quiet street - no idea of it's significance, but wouldn't you love to ride in this carriage!

Duomo exterior is so ornate and fun

Duomo exterior again - I loved how this lion seems to be looking right at me

We came across this...thing while attempting a shortcut to Siena's market; it's not listed in any of my guidebooks. There are two more arches just like this one, a pool of water in the covered area (filled with koi) and a tiny amphitheater. We liked the two decorative lions here having a little chit-chat.

Several times, we found ourselves on a road with a view towards this church. We never found out the name of it, but we always paused to enjoy the view.

Panoramic View of the Duomo and the rolling hills of Tuscany

Travels in Italia - Siena

Our final stop on the Italy tour was Siena, and what a finale! We had a rough start with a windy, bus ride through foggy Tuscany that left both of us feeling a little carsick. When we finally arrived in Siena, we set off for our hotel, this one being the only hotel for which we didn't have a good map of the city or clear directions. An interesting fact about Siena: it is hilly. Very, very hilly. At this point, I'd done almost all of my Christmas shopping and about half of my birthday shopping for the rest of the year, so traveling light was a distant memory. After a long slog up and down hills, backtracking about six times, and passing a breathtakingly beautiful Duomo, we reached our gorgeous hotel, Il Chiostro del Carmine, located in what was originally a 14th century Carmelite monastery. Entering into the courtyard of our hotel wiped away all the negatives from our Volterra hotel and exhausting walk to the hotel. Peaceful and beautiful...we were back on our hotel jackpot streak.

After a little rest, we hit the town, or at least Il Campo, Siena's main piazza. I'd visited Siena in 2003 and remembered only one thing about the entire city - Il Campo. It's a huge, sloping, circle, anchored at the bottom by the City Hall and it's huge tower (over 300 ft) on one side. I love Rick Steves' description of the Il Campo colors in his Florence & Tuscany 2011 guidebook: "The square and the buildings are the color of the soil upon which they stand...a color known to Crayola-users and other artists as 'Burnt Siena.'" The setting sun hits those colors and cause the piazza to turn a glowing pink, giving evidence to the reason artists flock to Tuscany. In need of a little refresher, we headed to Il Palio for cocktail hour and sat at the window staring out at this beautiful town square. We only left when a man sat down outside and caught us staring at his luscious, pink martini. Apparently, he mistook the lust in our eyes as aimed at him, so in order to avoid an awkward moment, we quickly paid our bill and headed off to dinner.

The next day, our only full day in Siena, we walked through the car-free old town to the weekly market, held on Wednesdays. A little note here - markets in Italy can cover a wide range of items. Generally, the solo word "market," means clothing and household items, possibly a section with produce and flowers. Markets a big deal here to American spouses - huge deal, actually. I've only been to one so far. I have no good reason or excuse for this. The one I visited here in Naples was interesting, but filled with an awful lot of junk. K thought the same about the Siena market, but I was wowed by it. I absolutely loved it. We found a vendor selling mill ends for thread/yarn on cones (K and I both knit) for only 2euros per cone, there were children's wool coats, lined in silk, for only 15 euros, and so much more. But, we were only in Siena for a day, and we had several more things to see.

We needed some lunch and picked a place we passed while walking on a quiet street near our hotel. Seated next to an Australian couple living in Siena, we got to talking with them. As it turns out, by sheer luck, we'd landed in one of Siena's best restaurants. We enjoyed our lunch so much that we immediately made a reservation for dinner as well - the final dinner of our trip.

Feeling much better with a good lunch in us, we headed to Siena's wedding cake, 13th century, Duomo. It is spectacular. Black and white striped columns line the nave, inlaid marble designs cover the floor, there's a Michelangelo sculpture, a Bernini chapel (my favorite sculptor, and unfortunately, the chapel was closed for restoration...which means I will definitely be back), a carved, marble pulpit that is so intricate I can't even believe human hands created it, and best of all, a side library with vibrant frescoes, painted in the 1400s and never restored, yet still as bright as if they'd been painted last year. The Michelangelo statue adorns an alter that was supposed to be for the tomb of a cardinal. That cardinal became a pope, so the tomb was never used. Michelangelo was supposed to carve several of the altar's statues, but the "David" project came up, so he left Siena having only completed one statue. Visiting the side library with the vibrant frescoes, we took note of the strong warning to keep the line moving - then entered to find a completely empty room. where we could stare and take photos to our hearts' content. I love off-season Italy!

Duomo interior is as beautiful as it's exterior

Michelangelo's statue of Paul

The Piccolomini Library's amazing frescoes tell the story of Pope Pius II, who was from Siena

Just a small section of the marble pulpit, with relief panels telling the story of Christ's life; It was carved by Pisano in the 1200s.

One of the many marble, mosaic floor panels - this one shows Siena in the center with other, lesser cities surrounding her

With the plan to climb the tower of City Hall, we headed over there and disappointingly found it had closed just after lunch. So back we trekked to the Duomo, where there is a museum with a rooftop, panoramic view. We just made it in before they closed and got to run up for a marvelous view over the town and countryside. This gave the added bonus of being able to view the exhibit containing the original, stained glass window of the Duomo up close, as the museum has it in a beautiful, well-lit display.

And so, our trip came to a close. I can't think of a better city in which to end. K preferred Florence to Siena, but I really fell in love with Siena. Even in the off season, the streets were crowded at dusk, time for the passagiatta (typical, Italian walk around town at dusk), so the town was active enough to not feel creepy yet small enough to have a quiet vibe. I cannot wait to return.

Volterra Catch Up

I completely forgot to mention one of the most interesting things about Volterra! K and I found this beautiful, stone pathway on our way to the "other side of town" - Volterra is very small, so the other side of town was less than a 10 minute walk. As we walked along, we noticed this old fortress up on the hill. Thinking it was some sort of tourist site to visit, we checked the guidebook that night to see if we'd want to visit it in the morning. We definitely do NOT want to visit it. This is a Medici fortress, about 500 years old, and now a maximum security prison holding only 30 of the criminals the Italian government consider the most dangerous. I suppose an old fortress is a pretty good place to use for this sort of thing.

And now, as I've done with the other cities from this trip, a few more photos:

A Foggy Morning in Volterra

The Roman ruins were even more interesting as they appear out of the fog

We were able to peek through some doorways and windows; Volterra was full of interesting ceilings - arches & frescoes abound.

Despite being above the clouds, the Tuscan sunset was stunning

Travels in Italia - Volterra

This was K's Grand Tour of Italy before returning to the U.S. I lobbied for a hill town visit as that's quintessential Italy. We picked Volterra. This would have been a great choice if (1) we hadn't had fog the entire time we were there blocking our view, and (2) Volterra weren't quite so off the beaten path. That appealed to us, and the trip to and from Volterra included a nice bus ride through the Tuscan countryside. Sadly, Volterra was actually ABOVE the clouds the whole time we were there, meaning that gorgeous view over the hills of Tuscany was completely obscured. In addition, this was the only hotel we booked on the fly, and it was horrible. Since we were only staying one night, it was fine, and since our trip was eleven nights and four hotels, having one bad seed wasn't too bad. Our hotel, Albergo Nazionale, only had two redeeming features: (1) It is quite literally, the closest hotel to the bus drop-off piazza, and (2) the view over the hills would have been incredible had it not been foggy. We were first assigned to a room that had not been touched by cleaning staff, even down to unmade and rumpled beds. We were then assigned to another room that had all the elements needed for a nice room, but was so dated and put together so poorly, that I stayed up all night long, waking from multiple nightmares of being eaten by bed bugs (to be fair, we did NOT get bitten by bed bugs at this hotel).

Despite this, the town of Volterra is a nice walking town. I think we were the only tourists in town, and this being the off season, many shops and restaurants were closed. Volterra does have a very interesting, Etruscan Arch, dating back to the 4th century B.C. It is part of the original city walls for this once important trade route city. Hard to imagine sleepy Volterra as one of the region's most important cities, but I suppose things can change in 2300 years.

The most amazing thing about Volterra is the virtually unadvertised, ancient Roman ruins that are fascinating. We could see no evidence of opening hours, the possibility to visit the ruins, or any other marketing ploys, but we were able to get great views by looking down from the old city walls. Apparently, these ruins were only discovered in the 1950s. There is an amphitheater, still containing parts of the columned stage, and our guidebook states this theater dates back to 10 B.C. There also seem to be what looks like a Forum area or perhaps some covered market stalls. We had seen some little signs on Volterra's street corners pointing the way to various sites around town, but for the most part, we just wandered around on our own. This made these ruins that much more delightful to find. We had no idea of their size, and this is one of the delights of Italy. The country is chock full of absolutely ancient ruins, and you never know what you're going to find when you turn a corner. It could be a dumpster full of garbage, an ugly, Mussolini era building, or 2000 year old ruins casting a bit of ghostly magic about the surroundings.

All in all, Volterra was a nice little break, but I was glad to move on to Siena.

A Volterra Street View

Twilight fans take note...the Volturi are from Volterra and parts of New Moon are set in Volterra. However, while a few scenes were filmed here, the majority of on-location filming was in another hill town, Montepulciano