N and R were in Siena, Tuscany

We spent 4 days in Siena, a *medieval* tuscan town that has not only been perfectly preserved, but is completely modern...there are stores of each and every kind from dollar (euro actually) stores to Bata, all housed in buildings dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries. There are several universities within the city walls so the town is quite young and fashioable.

I really liked Siena, due in large part to its central square, Piazza dei Campo. It is oddly modern for being built back in the 13th century: the piazza is not flat but instead slopes inward from all angles to a single point at the edge. We spent many days sitting here when the weather was nice. The Campo looked like this:

The castle like building, the Piazza Publico, has a very tall tower, the tallest standing medieval tower in italy. R was perfectly happy to sit in the piazza one sunny afternoon when i decided to climb the 500+ steps to the top. The view was amazing, and the climb to the top terrifying. There was a warning at the beginning that said if you have heart or respiritory conditions, are clausterphobic (i am), afraid of heights (i might be), "or prone to giddiniess" (no idea what that means), you should not go up the tower. I did anyhow. The stairs were shorter than my feet, the walls were narrower than my shoulders, and at times the ceiling was lower than my head, so this involved alot of sideways crawling. It was also bad news when you ran into someone going the opposite direction from you, because it ment one person had to back track a few flights. In any case, it was easily worth the adventure, the view from up to was amazing. It looked like this:

The duomo (cathedral) in Siena was maybe my favorite so far. The church is oddly colored, sea green, pink, and off-white, and each color is achieved through the use of solid marble. The effect was pretty surreal. The duomo looked like this:

Finally, on our last day, after walking up and down alot of very steep hills, we found that this city, amid its 800 year old buildings, has an escalator! the escalator looked like this:

Siena also looked like this:

N and R were in yet another medievil hill town

Nearly a week ago we drove from Foligno, our home base for exploring Umbria, to Siena, our homebase for exploring Tuscany. However, as we'd seen so many Umbrian medievil hill towns already, we were hill towned out. We did visit San Gimignano, famous for its numerous mediveil towers. There used to be 80 of them towering over the city, but now there are only about 10 left. They were build by 13th century aristocrats who each tried to out-do each other for the tallest tower in town. The city is best appreciated from the drive up the mountain below (not shown), and once up there it has great views of the famous Tuscan hill-side. I'll follow up with a post on our time in Siena, perhaps my favorite town yet. San Gimignano looks like this:

Soooooo fulllllll from dinner.....

tomorrow early morning we will leave Siena and drive through the Chianti region to Florence, where we will return the car and check into our apartment. We should have internet regularly from then on.

N and R were in Umbria

Umbria is the more practical, less visited neighbor of Tuscany. It is known for its medievil hill towns, of which we saw many, its picturesque country side, and for its truffles, wild boar, and proscuitto. Each was incredibly good (according to me).

We picked up the rental car in Rome - a Citron Picasso (its a boxy station wagon...a far cry from the alpha romeo i was hoping for) - and drove first to Assisi, burial place of St. Francis (established the Fransiscan order) and home to a cathedral in his honor, famous for its fresco'd interior. Assisi looked like this:

Our next stop was Spoleto, another hill town, which unlike Assisi is pretty functional...their medievil old city seemed to serve as a downtown for the surrounding modern city. It was nice to see such a historic and well preserved city that had not been gutted and turned into a tourist trap. There was also an amazing bridge built by the roman empire nearly 2,000 years ago; to appreciate its size, in the picture below that little black speck is me. Spoleto looked like this:

Our final Umbrian stop was the town of Norcia, in the Valnerina region of Umbria. It is near the northern end of the Apenine mountain range, and the drive to town was really nice. We drove part way up the snow capped Mount Sibilini before turning back, as the temperature during our drive dropped by 10 degrees (to below freezing) and the roads started to get a little scary. From the highest point we reached, if you looked out over one side it was green pastures and lush farmland, and over the otherside it was snow and looked like the dead of winter. The town itself is the culinary capital of Umbria, reknowned for their procsuitto and truffles. The dinner we had here was amazing...I never thought i'd get to enjoy a meal with truffles just crumbled right on top as if they were just a normal mushroom. Anyways, this was a really quaint town, and because it is pretty far from the bigger tourist stops like assissi, it had a nice genuine small town feel to it. Valnerina and Norcia looked like this:

Some images of Rome...

I caught a gladiator on his cell phone.

pretty good parking spot

We ate alot of gelato

...so did everyone else. R joked that even the toughest tough guy takes a break in his day to enjoy some gelato. Then sure enough we found Jason Stathem enjoying a cone-full outside vatican city.

roman forum

the pantheon

We left Rome and are driving through Umbria. No Internet

Enjoying the Italian Breakfast

Every morning i've been heading to different bars for the typical italian breakfast: cappucino and a cornetto, which is the italian version of a croissant and comes filled with either cream or jam. This is eaten standing at the bar, and the one pictured is the best cappucino i've had yet, from Sant Eustachio Caffe near the pantheon. It was very creamy and sweet, with a rich flavor.

The Bernini Code Deciphered

It's called a tartufo, its chocolate gelato with a cherry in the middle, rolled in shaved dark chocolate bits, and it was invented by the restaurant Tre Scallini on Piazza Navona. We found it, ate it, and enjoyed it. I'm still not sure which statue is the Ganges .

The Bernini Code

Not unlike Dan Brown's Davinci Code, yesterday we found ourselves in the Piazza Navona studying a famous fountain by Bernini, The Qauttre Fumi, except instead of hidden messages about christian history, we were searching for a hidden message regarding a nearby gelato place. This fountain has four male statues, each representing one of the major rivers known to exist at the time it was built: the nile, the plate, the ganges, and the danube. Aai said the figure representing the Ganges river points in the direction of a really good gelateria that makes some cupcake gelato thing....unfortunately of the four statues at the four corners of the fountain, not one looks more like the ganges than another. After looking closely at each one for signs that it maybe be an indian person represented in the statue (including arguments like 'is it an asp or is it a cobra?'), we eventually resorted to eavesdropping on better informed tourists with hopes of overhearing them name each statue in turn. Unfortunately we were only able to eliminate one statue we heard an italian man tell his wife was the nile (later we learned this guy was full of it and he was pointing to the wrong statue). Anyways her/e's the one i think was the ganges, in which case we know where to go for gelato today. aai, is this it?

Trevi Fountain

Breakfast in Rome

This morning for breakfast i enjoyed a cappuccino across the street from a 17th century cappuccin monastery. This is just across the street from our hotel.