Day 21: Siena, Italy

We caught an early train to Siena, which required a transfer at Pisa and Empoli, but was still only 3 hours away. Siena is a small tuscan hill town that once rivaled Paris and Florence until the palgue and the Medici family took over Tuscany.

After checking in at our B & B with a hotel lady that didn't speaka the English (and we don't parlo much Italiano), we walked to Il Campo. Il Campo is the center of the town; the paved sloping semicircle has lots of restaurants surrounding it, is the location of the Palio horse race where the neighborhoods have competed for centuries, and has a huge tower and city hall/museum. Brooke and I climbed the tower's 400 steps to get a view of the whole city, which has very Tuscan looking brick apartment buildings, an occasional giant church, and rolling hills in the background.

We also went to the Duomo, a huge church with black and white stripes covering the outside made out of marble. Brooke and her mom were given paper skirts to cover up (they were wearing shorts) and the guys had to take off their hats. It was another impressive church. Every square inch of the inside seemed to have a some detail, whether a painting, a sculpture, grave, etc.

After that church, we decided to pay homage to our high school's patron saint, St. Catherine. We skimmed some tourist maps and read that the St. Domenico Basillica held the only portrait painted when she was alive.

When we got their, we were taken back not by the portrait of St. Catherine, but her actual head (body not included) that was on display in a glass case. Creepy. The "relic" was in good shape, not just a skull or anything, her face was mostly intact 700 years later. The next building, which was built in the 1930s after St. Catherine was named the patron saint of Italy, held the crucifix from which she received the stigmata.

There wasn't too much more site seeing, more of just wandering the narrow, hilly streets. We looked in shops and had a late dinner in Il Campo.

We like Siena. We were happy to find our memory of Siena from visiting 6 years ago was spot on. It's a small city, just enough touristy stuff to keep busy, but not overcrowded or too big to walk.