We took the bus for a 75 minute ride south to Siena. It is known for a number of Medieval buildings and its town square, Piazza del Campo, which isn’t square but scalloped shaped.
We visited the Cathedral, one of the rare Gothic churches in Italy, also referred to as the Duomo:
The interior was as elaborate and full of detailed works as the exterior:
The weather was quite cool, about 5, and raining off and on. We spent quite bit of time in the Cathedral then went looking for a restaurant for lunch as well as a place to dry off and warm up. We ended up at Buca la Porsenna. Buca means the pit or hole, which was appropriate for this restaurant which was down two flights of steps.
The streets of Siena all seem to be on a hill so you’re either going up or down. We walked around, but the rain soon drove us under cover. Eventually, it let up so we went to the civic museum in the Palazzo Pubblica, which is the building with the tower in the first photo of this post. It has some significant frescoes from the 14th century, which both Allie and I studied in art history classes. After we wandered around some more, mostly to keep warm because it was too cool to stand around. We thought our bus was leaving at 6:10 but caught one at 5:40.
We found a restaurant after leaving the bus station on our way back to the flat, Trattoria Nerone:
The walls had old newpapers pasted all over them. None of us were terribly hungry after Siena but it was raining and cool in Florence as well so we needed something warm before heading back to our flat which has now got a lot of cookies and chocolate, but not much else to eat.
We are now back at the flat a little worse for wear from being out in the cold all day and more than likely from the bottles of vino we indulged in with Christmas dinner:
The photo includes a few from the night before, but it seems to all add up!
LHWatson's Travel Blog 