Kim and I drove Medusa from Naples north along the autostrade to Siena, which is in the heart of Tuscany. It was our first trip with Medusa and our first trip on the Italian autostrade. Both experiences went extremely well.
Medusa is a 1990 BMW 520i that we bought for $2,500. It is one of the most expensive vehicles that I have ever purchased and probably the most high class. But BMWs are all over the place here so it isn’t that special.
The autostrade was a blast to drive on. My average speed was 136. Relax, it was km/h, not mph. That only translates to 85 mph. That may sound fast but I was still constantly getting passed. It is custom here to flash your brights at someone that is in front of you and driving too slow. I was flashed a few times. It is not considered rude at all. What is rude is not moving over to let them pass. I had the chance a few times to flash but it still feels rude to me. Give me another month and I’ll be flashing everything.
We bought one of the little navigation GPS units and it is wonderful. It makes it a piece of cake to find where ever we are going. Especially since it takes us so long to read the signs here that by the time we figure out what the first word said, the sign is past and we missed all of the other words. The only problem with the GPS is sometimes it tells us to turn and when we look over, there is nothing but a brick wall for another mile. But then she just says “recalculating” and finds us another way. She did get us to Siena in one piece.
Siena is a medieval walled city that is full of little alleys paved in cobblestone and surrounded with tall apartment buildings and shops interspersed with plazas and churches. Some of the alleys have become tunnels as buildings have been built over them. Some were flat on the top of the hill while others were very steep. I was amazed that cars were allowed to drive on the streets even though they were full of people and so skinny.
The city is made up of 17 neighborhoods called Contradas. Their members are extremely loyal to their respective Contrada and make it a large part of their identity. Each Contrada has a long history, a mascot and most have become allies or adversaries with other Contradas. My favorite was the turtle, which naturally is opposed to the snail (who picks a snail as their mascot?). The walled city felt large but was small enough that we were able to see most of the sights of the city in the two days that we were there.
We stayed at an old (very old) house that had been turned into a hotel. There were only eight rooms and they were on four different stories so there were two rooms per floor. It had a really neat feel to it. It was pretty nice but the two ladies that managed it were pretty creepy. We were the only guests in the hotel due to it being the off-season. Luckily the hotel that we stayed in was in the walled part of the city so it was within walking distance of everything. That allowed us to park Medusa and leave her in one spot for the two days.
The first major sight of the city that we saw was the Piazza di Campo, which is the heart of the city. It is a shell shaped plaza that is surrounded by shops and the city hall, which has a huge tower that overlooks the plaza. We were going to climb the tower at the end of our second day but our feet were just too tired from walking everywhere. The view would have been amazing though.
During the summer Siena has two horse races called Il Palio. It just means “The Race” in Italian. The course takes the horses around the perimeter of the piazza a few times and only lasts a few minutes, but is one of the most famous and oldest races in Europe. Each Contrada enters a horse in the race. Only 10 out of the 17 get to race at a time (which is why they have two races).
After walking through the piazza we headed up to the duomo, which was awesome. It is Siena’s masterpiece Cathedral. It was made of white marble with stripes made out of a black stone. It reminded me of Egyptian art, especially the inside because the striping was more pronounced. The floors have amazing works of art out of marble. There was maintenance being conducted on the duomo since it is the off-season for tourism so we chose to wait to take a tour until the next time we visit.
We found a flyer for a Bach concert that night and decided to attend. It didn’t start until 9PM so we went to dinner and came back. It was pretty cold during the day but it was freezing that night. We dressed as warm as we could but we couldn’t stay warm. Kim almost bought a scarf earlier in the day but chose not to. She regretted it the rest of the night. The concert was free and was really good but we couldn’t wait for it to end because we were so cold. There was not a way for them to heat the duomo either because it was so huge and wasn’t designed to be heated.
The next day we went to a museum that was housed in one of the first hospitals in Europe. It was located right across the square from the duomo and had three floors. It opened in the 900’s and was still in operation until the mid-1990’s. The hospital is still around, it just moved to more modern facilities. The museum had stuff ranging form ancient archeological artifacts to paintings and frescos from the 17th century. The art in the museum was amazing but we will probably come to find it common-place here.
We were pretty tuckered out after the museum so we decided that it was time to head out. We found Medusa and made it home in just in time for me to watch
