7/31 -- Siena

August 28, 2022

I went for a walk early-ish this morning (6:30) and ended up at Fortezza Medici (Medici Fortress), built in the 1500s by the Duke of Florence and the King of Spain in the hopes it would allow them to take control of Siena, but before it was completed the Sienese people rebelled and took control of the fortress, and began tearing it down. They then had to use it for themselves in the war that followed and ultimately were overtaken by Spaniards and Florentines, and Siena was eventually under control of Florence, so the fortress was rebuilt in order to prevent further acts of rebellion. It was demilitarized in the 1700s and became a public space. This morning it was still set up from a 3 day music festival to support climate preservation that took place there last weekend, and there was a bunch of exercise equipment on the top built into a park.

I really like the early morning walks I take in Billings too, but this was extra special.

We had tickets to climb the Porto del Cielo (Gate of Heaven) of the Siena Duomo this morning, and like all the Duomos we’ve seen it was incredible. The craftsmanship that went into building it is really astounding. After we finished that, we happened on a parade through the streets. Siena has 17 distinct neighborhoods and they seemingly randomly bust out in parades with drums and flag choreography. There was one outside our apartment around 11:00 last night (followed by dance music that played until around 2 am), and then we happened upon third, fourth, fifth and sixth parades later in the day, each representing a different neighborhood. The enthusiasm of the crowd was contagious.

Because we had so much enjoyed the pizza and gelato making class we took in Florence, and because the kids are kind of museum-ed out, we looked for (and found) a pasta making class that we were able to get into last minute. We were with a very nice family from New Jersey. We learned to make pici pasta (a Siena specialty), ravioli with spinach and ricotta cheese, and gnocchi. And then we got to eat it in a long lunch with different sauces (with the other family). My favorite was the ravioli in butter and sage; the kids liked pici in a four cheese sauce. After lunch, we stopped for gelato (where they had a flavor called That’s Amore that was raspberry with chocolate, which 100% is amore for me) and then headed to the train station to visit a small town called Poggibonsi. Siena sits atop a hill, with the no-car section in the center and then more of a “regular” town outside the walls. The train station is at the bottom of the hill, and they have a series of escalators that take you down to it, which was mostly cool and only slightly scary because in my 45 years I have mostly conquered my fear of down escalators. Mostly.

We went to Poggibonsi because they have a village from the early Middle Ages that is in the process of being excavated and restored and has been turned into an open air museum, only open on Sunday afternoons (which is when we happened to be in the area). When we arrived at the train station (after a no-air-conditioning-even-though-it-was-nearly-100-degrees trip that was cool nonetheless as we passed a few old stone castles on the way there), we plugged in the destination on Google maps and saw it was about 25 minutes. We’ve kind of decided that anything under a 30 minute walk is doable (which has been every place we’ve gone so far within a city), but as I mentioned it was nearly 100 degrees and the Archeodromo was uphill from the station so we wanted to take a taxi. We walked to the taxi stand, which was literally a sign with four people’s names and phone numbers. I called the first two who said they were too busy, and the second person asked where we were going and said, “You can walk, it’s not far.” Obviously we couldn’t let a faceless Italian taxi driver think we were lazy, so we walked. The museum was a bit of a disappointment. What was there was very interesting, but the website gave us the impression that there would be people acting out different professions from the time and teaching about them, but in reality there was one guy there who didn’t say a word. So we headed back to the train station and to Siena, and then for a late dinner, then bed.

Sadly, Julia's water bottle got left on the train to Poggibonsi.

Our room had been so hot the night before that neither Jourdan nor I really slept, so we moved the mattress from our bedroom to the floor of the air-conditioned kitchen for the night. Lesson learned: don’t take “air conditioning” on an Airbnb listing at face value, especially if you’ll be traveling during a heat wave, always ask whether the bedrooms are air conditioned!