Adventures in Siena?

Well, perhaps I should say adventures getting to and from Siena...

We got up a bit early yesterday and caught the bus to Siena.  It's only about 70 minutes away, and the bus was a double-decker (enclosed), so I trotted up to the top level because hey, I wanted to see it all!  The bus wound through the streets of Florence, then into the Tuscan countryside and through vineyards and trees.  So serene, so beautiful...but a bit of a winding road and I didn't even realize that, to varying degrees, everyone was getting a bit queasy except for two of us (Alec and me).

About 5 minutes from our destination, I noticed Andreas (Carina's son) getting really, really quiet....and then...  Poor Andreas.  Luckily, we were almost there, and when we got off the bus, Carina had to buy new clothes fo Andreas and for Per (who was sitting next to him).  While she shopped for the boys, Alec and Zeph and I had a slice of pizza.  Yum.  

Siena is a small, sleepy little town in the hills that is consistently about 10 degrees cooler than Florence in the summer and boasts a really cool little town square, churches (go figure), some really hilly streets, and twice a year the Palio.  The palio is a horse race that pits neighborhood against neighborhood (each of which has a flag with a different animal on it) for bragging rights.  The race takes place around the town square, with people standing around the edges, hanging out of windows, and watching from restaurant balconies, cheering on their homies.  We weren't there on a palio day, which was just fine for us.

I have to put a plug in here for Rick Steves.  That man's books have given us some really good tips, for places to eat, things to do, and time allotments for certain attractions.  Of course, it would still be nothing without Sara, tha amazing tour guide and Rick Steves apprentice.

We saw a church (of course) but this one had a twist.  As apparently is common here, the church was completely buried in a flood some centuries ago, and the resulting dirt that filled the church preserved it wonderfully.  A new church was built, and it was only in recent times that the old "underneath" church was discovered.  The wall frescos were preserved, and now are being slowly uncovered for all to see.  There is just nothing like this in the states, especially in the west, and I still find it completely fascinating.  

So, a trip to some hole-in-the-wall restaurant that boasts a menu with 50 different types of sandwiches (and the most awesome neon-lit bathroom that even had neon lights IN the toilet bowl, making the water an irridescent green), and a little stroll around the piazza, then back to the bus.  Confident that the bus ride back would be less eventful (since we would sit on the bottom deck AND had equipped ourselves with multiple plastic bags just in case), we trotted onto the bus.  Ten minutes into the ride, the bus stopped and we were told to disembark, and we then got onto another bus (apparently, ours was broken).  This would have been less uncomfortable if it wasn't in the middle of a drenching thunderstorm.  So, a little damp, we settled into bus number two.  Five minutes later, the driver pulled over to wipe the inside of the windshield because the defroster was apparently not working.  After two more such stops, he pulled over under an overpass and got on his phone.  Sara said, "Wo, that was the most angry 'pronto' I have heard..." as he got in touch with the bus depot and then yelled for a few minutes and hung up.  We sta for about twenty inutes, and then bus number THREE showed up.  More musical buses, and then luckily an uneventful trip the rest of the way back to Florence.

Sara went into the bus station (bless her heart) to see if we could get a refund, but apparently the policy only allows for a refund for missing a scheduled arrival by an hour or more, and we were only 50 minutes late.  Ah well, no worries.  We were home, and stopped for doner kebob on the way back to the apartment.  Life is good.

Another evening of cracking up and catching up with Carina's family, and now here it is Tuesday morning.  My three kids are cooking American breakfast for our Swedish guests before they go home to Sweden this afternoon, and then we might go to a museum this afternoon.  It's really up to Tour Guide Sara.  I love, love, love not being in charge.  LOVE it.

I am still plotting how I could come live here for a few months, maybe a few years from now.  Life's short.

But I would need air conditioning and mosquito netting...