Italia 2019: Day 2, and we walk our legs off seeing the city
We knew we had very little time in Siena, because the focus on this trip is the walk in the Tuscan Hills; but there was no way we were not going to see as much the city as we could. Eschewing the galleries and enjoying the fantastic autumn weather — it’s about 26 degrees but the sunshine has a bite — we hit the pavement.
It’s small by any standards, although we managed to lose shops that we promised to return to later, as the Campo creates a bit of a maze among the narrow streets. It must have been quite the fortress in medieval times, although the Medicis eventually stamped their number on it in the 16th Century.
It’s supposed to be visited by 160,000 visitors a year, and when we were visiting the Duomo, I was convinced they were all there at once. However, the Sienese share that continental sense of the communal evening, because it wasn’t just the tourists that graced the bars and cafes around the Piazza del Campo. It made for a wonderful evening, sitting over drinks and dinner, watching the world go by. My key piece of evidence when spotting tourists is to look at the shoes. Good shoes and you are looking at an Italian; bad shoes and you are looking at the English-speaking world. After that, complains about food identify the poms, overweight women a sure sign of Americans, and some bastard sledging the aperitif and demanding “a decent bottle of red” is the ugly Australian abroad. The Pythons would have a field day.
Of course, there’s an app, a good one that gives you a guided tour with navigation, and promised the highlights in three hours. Obviously the developer didn’t count on my need to read all the signs and labels, and our willingness to actually enter the places it took us to. Seriously, you could spend three hours in the Duomo and not scratch the surface; but as we were realistic about this as a reconnaissance mission, it didn’t matter. One would return just for the food, including the most amazing panini in a little shop near the baptistery.
It would have been nice to spend more time looking into Catherine of Siena and doing some more wandering, but just being here was relaxing because it certainly has a lower pace than a big city like Milan or Rome. The pressure is off and we are in the mood.
