A Relaxing Day in Siena - August 17, 2010

Tuesday August 17, 2010

Senne's Summary: Just a relaxing day in Siena.

This morning we enjoyed our breakfast again which is provided by the B&B. Lots of food, and a nice way to start the day.

We decided to go to the bus station to see if we could find the schedule for the bus to San Gimignano. We're not stupid, and we’ve had a bit of practice with public transportation in Europe… but this one is beyond us. Found a schedule (finally) but it has all kinds of abbreviations and no legend. We can’t tell if that means, every day, some days, when the moon is full… Then it said you catch the bus in "area 3". Well we can find areas 1, 2 and 4, but not area 3. Since we didn’t actually have money to buy a ticket we thought we’d head back later and try to figure it out again when we could actually buy the ticket 😀

Then we took a wandering walk through the Siena streets… and surprise, surprise ended up at a gelato shop :) YAY! Steve had dark chocolate and coconut (again!) and I had “kinder” and Rocher (nothing beats the Rocher!). We sat down in the Piazza de Campo to eat our ice cream. While we were there we watched puppies, kids chasing birds, and the workers cleaning up all traces of the Palio from yesterday. The Piazza looked totally different less than 24 hours after the big race!

Here's a few shots from the streets of Siena...

No words. needed...

Today was just really another day of wandering… nothing earth shattering… just a nice relaxing day. We did manage to get our bus tickets to San Gimignano and decode the schedule (Italian translator on the Internet is extremely helpful!) and just enjoyed a peaceful day.

Oh I almost forgot! On our evening walk the winning Contrada was having a parade. Everyone from the community was in it. They had the medieval costumes, the drums, singing/chanting and even the horse at the end. They just go up and down the streets celebrating. I’m not sure how long they’d been doing it, but we heard the drums earlier in the day… hours for sure!

And so ends a beautiful relaxing day in Siena.