siena, italy

It was a bit tricky to get to Siena, and we had to make a few train changes. We finally got there though. Siena's train station is actually just outside of the main city, so we still had to take a bus up the hill and into town. We had our trusty Rick Steve's guidebook, which said to get on any bus marked with one of three piazza names and get off at the last stop. Well, we kept waiting and waiting and waiting for that last stop, until Siena became a tiny dot in the distance and we were out in the tuscan countryside. Oops. Turned out we had missed our stop somehow and were on our way to a neighbouring city. With the help of a nice lady that spoke only a little English, we were told to get off and wait for a bus going back in the other direction. Two hours after we had arrived in Siena the first time, we arrived in Siena again (and managed to get off at the right stop!) and found a relatively cheap hotel. It probably wasn't the cheapest we could have found, but at that point we were exhausted from lugging all of our gear all over town and just settled on it. That night we just walked around a bit and went to a few bookstores looking for Rick Steves' Rome guidebook which we luckily found, and spent some time.. ok a LOT of time on the internet.. haha..

The next day we did all of our Siena sightseeing. We were staying right near the main square, Il Campo. Every year in this square they have a horse race that the whole city goes crazy for. I guess there are multiple districts within the city, and each district has it's own horse (which they take to their church to have blessed beforehand!). The race takes place around the actual square, and only lasts about three minutes, but it's a huge deal! That would have been really cool to see, but it takes place during the summer. We also toured the Duomo (cathedral) which was really impressive. We actually first paid for and went into the Baptisery, which we THOUGHT was the entrance to the cathedral, lol.. oh well it was cool too. Inside the actual Cathedral there was so much tiled mosaic work on the floor. They were SO detailed and the tile pieces were so tiny. It must have taken forever to make all those scenes! Attached to the church was the library, which had some really cool, huge old song books that were all hand drawn and painted. We also went to another church, where they had the actual head and finger of Saint Catherine on display. It was... weird. The head was kind of far away on an altar in one of the side chapels, so it was hard to make out details..but it was definitely a head! The finger just looked all dry and shriveled..yick. The day was pretty rainy and miserable and short.. I don't think we did much else that night besides planning and reading up for Rome.