We love Siena!

On Wednesday, we spent the day in Siena, about an hour and a half from Villa Fabbroni. The morning Tuscan fog had not yet lifted by the time we arrived and I was very underdressed in a light t-shirt. Fortunately, there was a huge market happening there, so I seized the opportunity to do some sweater shopping. I found an great long black flowy mohair sweater that served me perfectly that chilly morning.

Siena is a medieval walled city that is charming and quaint yet lively and relevant as it is home to the University of Siena and has many of the usual characteristics of being a college town. Also, it is home to the Palio, a 90 second horse race that happens twice each summer - once in July and once in August. The race has been a tradition in Siena for hundreds of years, yet still draws enormous crowds and invokes highly competitive passion in its citizens. The race happens in the center of town in Piazza del Campo (or just Il Campo), a huge D-shaped area surrounded by tall medieval buildings.

While in Siena, it's easy to get lost in the endless maze of narrow streets, steep tunnels, and dark alleys - nothing like a typical grid layout so familiar in modern U.S. cities. However, one only needs to know how to get back to Il Campo, as everything within the walls literally centers around it. We walked for hours through the city, stopping for espressos, lunch, and gelato along the way.

We then visited the Duomo, which was spectacular. The exterior boasts an astonishing facade, dense with elaborate sculpture and colored in black & white, the main colors in the Siena flag.



The inside is floored by stunning mosaics, walled with breathtaking paintings, and filled with marble sculptures, including some by Michaelangelo. And then there was a museum! We toured both the Duomo and the museum, a highlight of the latter being a climb up an extremely narrow winding staircase to the tower, where we got an expansive panoramic view of the burnt orange rooftops of the city and the Tuscan countryside beyond.





We walked a little more, stopping in to a salumeria that almost knocked us over by its aroma. For fans of italian sausage and cheese, this was a mecca. We bought a big bottle of Moretti and a couple of lemon cookies. The owner kindly gave us some plastic cups and allowed us to drink our beer in front of his store. A few minutes later, he came outside and gave this delicious and generous snack:



We wound down the day at Il Campo, where the brick and stone was warm from the day's sun. The crowd was a blend of tourists and skinny-jean college hipsters. We joked that it looked like a medieval quad, with only the surrounding architecture differentiating it from any ordinary college campus. Still, the energy of the place was amazing and Siena officially became one of our favorite places in Italy.

Villa Fabbroni

We left Rome on a 1:00 train to Florence. The ride was relaxing and scenic. Brian dozed and listened to music while I wrote notes and looked at pictures of the previous two days.

After a ninety minute ride, we arrived in Florence. The Hertz rental car office was supposedly 500 meters from the train station, but we had a little trouble finding it. We dragged our heavy luggage down steps, over cobblestone streets, and through narrow alleys for what seemed like an hour. We finally found it and got the keys to a cute little VW Golf.

Driving in Florence was pretty easy, albeit a bit faster paced than I would have preferred right out of the gate. Within a few minute though, we were out of the city, heading to our villa in San Polo in Chianti - about 10 miles out of town.

It was impressive that the GPS box got us to our villa, which well off the pavement, up a windy gravel road on top of a hill in the Tuscan countryside. However, the place wasn't exactly marked and we drove in circles for about an hour - passing the villa at least 4 times before we finally saw a person there and stopped to ask if this was Villa Fabbroni. It was indeed!

We were first greeted by Raoul, the farm dog, then by Stephano, the gracious host. He gave a tour of our place, which was charming, rustic, had all the comforts of home. It also had a beautiful deck that looked over the hills full with vineyards and olive groves and onto another villa below. Stephano informed us about the restaurant hours, daily fresh bread, and Tuesday-only pizza service. Lucky for us it was Tuesday, so we ordered a 3 section pie - one plain, one veggie, one meat. He also let us know that we could purchase estate olive oil and wine for very reasonable prices. We took him up on the offer to buy wine and he filled us up a 5 liter jug for only E15! We were even more pleased when we tasted it. Delizioso!

That evening we sat on the deck, drank wine, ate pizza, and relaxed.

Campo Di Fiori & Piazza Navona

Tuesday morning, we got up, grabbed a cannoli for breakfast (that's right - don't judge), and headed to Campo Di Fiori, a big public market near the river recommended to us by the hotel staff. Beautiful produce never ceases to amaze me and this was no exception. Blown away, I couldn't stop taking pics of the stunning fruits and vegetables. At this, I almost wept:



And this:



And this:




We bought some fat red grapes and a small jar of rucola "cream,", a blend arugula, olive oil, red wine vinegar, and sea salt pureed into a spreadable paste. It was fantastic and was a great snack later in the day with some fresh bread. We were both pleased that the ingredient list on the lid of the jar included percentages of each ingredient. We'll definitely try to make this at home.

We left the market to head back to the hotel, stopping along the way at the Piazza Navona. There were several artists there selling their work... perhaps a bit touristy, but beautiful nonetheless. Brian sat and munched on grapes while I shopped and snapped some photos. I bought a small watercolor of the piazza itself and for a few minutes played with a cute dog, who was happy to ham it up for the camera.

The Colosseum

Not much to say about the Colosseum that the pictures don't say themselves. It's cold and dark and falling apart in places where modern man has reinforced and re-reinforced. The barbaric tales make you shudder in disgust, yet you're in awe of the very same people who built a structure that lasted 2000 years. For me, the Colosseum is a place that represents the furthest extremes of what humans are capable of - from the darkest atrocities to the most magnificent creations.

Rucola

After leaving the Vatican, we hopped on a red train to the Termini station - Rome's Grand Central if you will. We were headed to the Colosseum, which required th

at we switch to the blue train, but all that artwork and B.O. made us hungry, so we went above ground and found a restaurant near the station. We had one of Brian's favorites, calamari fritto, and a delicious prosciutto and arugula pizza. It was here that I stopped to notice how amazing the arugula is in Italy. Yes that's right - the leafy peppery stuff. It seems to be in or on everything we eat - even in things we don't expect. At home we're pretty big fans of arugula, but it seems to have more spunk here. I'm not sure if it's a different strain or just super fresh, but it's the most powerfully flavorful arugula I've ever had. At this particular place, the arugula atop our pizza had several clusters of tight buds, packed with concentrated flavor or green peppercorns and fresh cut grass. I'm really enjoying my rediscovery of this leafy green.

Sistine Chapel

After our visit to St. Peter's, we walked around to the back entrance of Vatican City to get in line for the Musei Vaticani, which despite housing tens of thousands of sculptures, paintings, and tapestries, really seemed to be all about the Sistine Chapel. The museum is designed in a way that you walk through room after room, each packed with artwork until you reach the final destination - Michaelangeo's masterpiece. I'd estimate the procession of people through the museum was thousands in number, again, with the procession having a very impressive length to time ratio. At points though, it bottlenecked and got very hot and stuffy. We couldn't help but be annoyed by all the close body contact, made worse by the fact that there were obviously varying levels of hygenic responsibility in the crowd.

The Sistine Chapel is much smaller than I expected it to be. I'll have to verify this later, but I'd guess it to be not much more than 1000 square feet. It was packed wall to wall with people, a lucky few being able to sit on a bench that ran the perimeter of the room. There were a few guards shushing people and yelling "No Videos!" and "No Photos!" repeatedly. Their authority was ignored by many, who simply turned their flashes off and snapped anyway. A few spats started between the picture-takers and the non picture-takers, who took it upon themselves to enforce the seemingly soft rule. It was bizarre, uncomfortable, and completely not what I expected of such a sacred place.

That said, my travel companion and I managed to smuggle a few shots for ourselves.

Vatican City - St. Peter's Basilica

We were both up early Monday morning, mostly adjusted to the time change. While I sat in the breakfast room at the hotel and uploaded pics, Brian headed out for a walk. An hour or so later, he called me from Vatican City and said to walk over to meet him. It wasn't exactly a short walk. In SF terms, it was probably like walking from the Marina to the Financial District - doable, but a cab or bus would have been just as reasonable. After a brisk 20+ minute walk, I met Brian and we stopped in to a bar (which here, is a cafe) and grabbed a danish and a cappucino.

We headed over to Vatican City and joined the thousands of tourists already there. We got into line to enter St. Peter's Basilica. It was the most disproportionate queue-length to wait-time ratio I've seen in my entire life - a couple thousand people (seriously!) wrapped more than halfway around the circumference of the place took only 15 minutes to get in the door. Amazing!

While in line, we met a nice elderly couple from Bruges. Upon watching our failed attempt at a quality longarm shot with the Basilica centered behind us, the nice Belgian man offered to take our picture. So he did:



Inside, as one would expect, the art, architecture and spirit of the space was truly amazing. With thousands of others, we sauntered from piece to piece, reading placards, taking pics, observing. Brian thinks that most (if not all) of the people there have no idea what they're taking photos of. I agree and am certainly no exception. Still, many snaps ensued.

One thing I didn't snap, but wish I did was a particular couple - a blind woman and her husband. They were standing a few feet away from me admiring an elaborate wall-mounted marble sculpture. As the woman moved both hands slowly over it taking it in with her fingertips, her husband spoke quietly into her ear describing each detail of the piece. I'm not sure what it says about me or my sensibilities toward art, but amid all the glorious breathtaking artwork, that was easily the most beautiful thing I saw that day.