Amy: It is too bad that Rome has so many must see sights. My impression of the city was it was too crowded, dirty and the drivers were crazy. It did not give me a good first impression of Italy. As we left Rome and got closer to the Province of Siena I started to fall in love with Italy. I really can’t imagine being here at any other time of year and missing out on the incredible fall colours. The landscape is amazing. It was actually a rainy day when we arrived in the city of Siena and after a quick stop at tourist information we headed back in the direction we came from to the one campground we were told was open. It was in a small town South of the City of Siena and there were not too many people there when we first arrived.
We were hoping to ride our bikes in Tuscany but the strong wind and hilly winding roads made it difficult to motivate ourselves to do so. Instead we did two days of driving tours that included some time in a natural hot spring and lots of time visiting many of the small towns in the area. We sampled some of the local food including Pecorino cheese (sheep cheese) and Panforte ( a heavy honey, almond & lemon cake) We aren’t so sure about the cheese but we both enjoyed the Panforte. I also had a bottle of Chianti and a Moretti beer and both were delicious. After the two days of driving the sun came out so we couldn’t bring ourselves to get in the car and move on. Instead we hung out for 2 more days doing some exploring of the area by foot. There are a lot of olive trees in the area including 5 or 6 hundred in the campground we were staying in. We noticed that many people were harvesting their olives so we talked to the woman who ran the campground and found out that the town olive press was in operation and her son was taking some of their olives there that night. Being the tourists we are, we found out where the press was and went to see how the olive oil was made. The son was quite excited to show us the process the olives went through even though he didn’t speak English. It was quite interesting to see how it is made.
Today we traveled into the city of Siena and saw the sights there. It is getting hard to stay motivated to sight see given all that we have seen so far. The Doumo was quite impressive and we enjoyed having lunch in Piaza il Campo (the main square) as it was one of the few areas where the sun was shining. The buildings in Siena are quite high so many of the streets are shaded. We left Siena about 2:30 and headed to Florence. We found a place to camp and are looking forward to touring the city tomorrow. It is quite impressive from what I have seen so far. The weather the past few days has been great so I am hopeful it will continue until we can get through the mountains on our way back to Frankfurt.
It takes too long to sort through all the pictures so I am uploading what we have.
