I wanted to arrive in Siena on Saturday when shops are open since I will inevitably need to buy some things for the apartment I’m renting for the week.

I was going by train and wanted to arrive in Milano Centrale early to look around the station which has interesting architecture underneath the Fascist era decorations. But I overslept and got to the station only 10 minutes before departure. Ten minutes is enough to board the train, but not enough to sightsee.

I was last at Milano Centrale in 2018. The inclined people movers are new since then, I think, although I was only changing trains so wouldn’t have been in this area. They were definitely not in the station in 2013 when we stayed in Milan.

My first train was from Milano Centrale to Santa Maria Novella in Florence on a Frecciarossa, the fast trains.

Then a Regionale train to Siena. Since last weekend, Trenitalia now has an automated system for Regionale trains. You no longer get paper tickets but a code. Some instructions I read said you enter the code onto your Trenitalia app. But in Canada, I cannot get the app. Other instructions just said you don’t need to do anything. I was unsure how I could go through the automated gates if I left the platform area since I had nothing to scan to get back into the platform area. There are Trenitalia booths but the one inside the platform area had an angry woman yelling at the agent. I decided not to queue behind her to ask what (if anything) I needed to do.

The Regionale trains, unlike Frecciarossa, have no reserved seating and it’s possible to stand the entire trip if the seats are full. That was the situation on the arriving train. It looked like Tokyo trains at rush hour with people squished into every available space. People were getting off complaining what a horrible experience they just had. Lots of people wanted to get to Florence but not many wanted to leave.

I thought I would just wait to see what the train conductor said when I showed him my code and no app. A official looking guy started asking for tickets from a group of young guys but after dealing with them, he left and never returned. I’m going to have to figure this out before I leave Siena although Siena doesn’t have fancy automated gates.

The train stopped at a lot of places I had not heard of before but since I fell asleep for part of the 1 hour and a half trip, it didn’t seem too bad. A taxi from the station to the apartment was 15 minutes and would have been less if the driver didn’t have to back track because a road was closed.

I successfully lifted my bag overhead four times in total. My 12 kg bag is about at my arm strength limit. I keep hoping it will get lighter as I use up liquids and pills.

Maybe I will get stronger in Siena. It is not big, about 50,000 population and very hilly. I’m staying in a pedestrian only area in an apartment that takes 72 steps to get to the door plus 2 more inside. Either this will be good for my plantar fasciitis or I will be hobbling all week.

The apartment isn’t large but has a small balcony.

My apartment for the next week:

A short walk to the end of the street, turn right to Via di Città for groceries but walk a little farther, very slowly because of all the tourists, and you can see Piazza del Campo, the main square in front of the historic city hall.

If you don’t turn right but walk on the next street, Via del Capitano, for a short distance, at its end is the Duomo.

Somewhere nearby is the school I start at on Monday but after walking on the inclined streets and making trips to each of the grocery stores, i.e. going up 74 steps twice, I’m leaving locating the school as tomorrow’s project. I’m also just across the street from Siena’s Pinacoteca but not sure it’s open on Sunday. If it is, that’s also tomorrow’s project.

There’s a gelateria just doors away and another around the corner near one of the grocery stores.

Nocciola and cioccolato—not bad but not as rich as the best Rome gelaterie.

I’m going to have to do the stairs one more time. Trenitalia gave me water, coffee, a muffin-like thing filled with cooked fruit (eww) and a shortbread cookie. I bought some bread, butter, wine and cheese, but I’m going to need to go out for some dinner.

I rarely make a restaurant reservation when I’m on my own. Most places will squeeze me into a table, often where the other seats at a table are undesirable for one reason or another. But in Siena at 8 pm almost every restaurant I tried had no room. I’m guessing tourists were filling the restaurants because Italians tend to arrive at restaurants closer to 9 pm. I did manage to find a place where I had fennel salad

and pici (a very thick noodle) and cinghale (wild boar)

The Sienese and Florentines have a very long history of rivalry, but both have bread with no salt used in its baking. The bread is only good if used to mop up sauce or slathered with butter, which usually is unsalted, so needs a pinch of salt as well.