Chapter 13 - Surprise News from Home and Tuscany Town Touring

Happy Mother's er Grandmother's Day

Today started off with a bang. We got a partial email message from Elaine's son Tim that indicated that his wife Lauren had their first child, three weeks early, but no other info (likely due to poor connectivity). After piecing together his email and other family emails, we learned that we had our first granddaughter, Hailey Sage Bolle. We finally saw pictures and actually Face-timed with Lauren, Tim and Hailey while we were walking the streets of Siena later in the day. Isn't technology simultaneously frustrating and amazing?

Beautiful San Gimignano

We spent the day touring medieval Tuscan towns. We started in San Gimignano, a small town famous for its towers halfway back to Florence. It is small and beautiful and very, very hilly. It is quite a tourist spot. This is the main street - we tried not to imagine what it would be like in July!

We quickly learned that a favorite Tuscan food is wild boar, in this case, made into salami!

The towers are nearly in view at all times. They make for a stunning skyline against the Tuscan countryside.

The way these two sit at this angle had a bit of an uncomfortable resemblance to the World Trade Center.

From below, they are imposing.

In the beautiful details of the buildings, you could see culture evolve from 1200-1700. This is the courtyard of a very old church

And these facades and windows show the domestic architecture evolving.

We were constantly climbing up and down, but the views were definitely worth it.

And then there were the little quirky things that came into the camera lens to pose, like this street musician.

And this door knocker.

This very stony town did seem somewhat monochrome most of the time, but when there was color - it screamed out, like in this window.

And, in this amazing view down an alley...yes, it looked exactly just like this, no Photoshop.

Touring Siena

Next we drove to Siena where we had lunch—great pecorino cheese 4 variations to start and a mushroom pizza - very good. This was in a funny corner of the restaurant.

We had a guide in Siena for a 2 hour walking tour. She was very knowledgeable. The town is nice, but larger and much more commercial than San Gingnamino. It even has a bit of a "skyline".

And its own towers.

In the center of town is a very large plaza, Piazza del Campo, where the famous horseraces, the Palio are held. It was paved in brick diagonals in the 14th Century representing the 9 leaders and sections of the town. Here is where they come together.

They have found creative ways to combine old buildings and global chain stores  - this is the inside of the Benetton store.

The details on the buildings do offer interesting shapes for the eye.

Two key religious buildings filled a good bit of our guided tour. We first visited the synagogue, an interesting example of a Sephardic ghetto synagogue with lovely simple details and useful as a comparison to the one we saw in Florence (and the ones we were to see later in Venice.)

There was also a small museum with historic Judaica-ritual objects.

It was also fun to learn that although the Jewish community is very small (only 53 people) they had a bar mitzvah there the day before our visit.

Next we went to the medieval Siena cathedral, one of the most well-known in Italy, was originally designed and completed between 1215 and 1263. The outside is quite impressive, whether as full facade...

or close-up detail.

Inside is a work of amazing work and artistry, from the altar

to the ceiling

to the richly painted walls.

But, perhaps, the most spectacular feature is the mosaic floors, famous throughout Italy.

We say "perhaps" about the floor, because just as we were leaving, the guide suggested a peek at the library ceiling. You pick!

Looking back through our Siena pictures was a reminder that, as in most Italian cities, going down the side streets and alleys can lead to hard to forget picturesque views, like these.

Especially this one reminding us of the countryside just outside where we would soon be exploring wineries.

As it was nearing evening when we returned to Montepulciano, we had our driver drop us in town. Since the shops stay open late, we checked out places that sell handmade copper items, ceramics and linens. Then we were able to just walk to our charming restaurant.

We had another great meal, but must have been so hungry that we forgot to take notes on the dishes and only managed one decent picture of what looks like quail ??

Once more, the challenge was getting back to the hotel.The taxi did not answer so the restaurant called our hotel. With a "no worries" and many apologies, the owner of the hotel, Stephanie, came and drove us back to the hotel from the restaurant.  

So...finally tomorrow we were off to wineries - first the ones nearby in the Siena Province.