Rome to Tuscany

Traffic lanes on the streets of Rome are more of a suggestion than anything as we discovered once we got in our rental car and headed for Tuscany.  The rental car process presented several challenges.  There were no obvious signs for rental cars at the Termini Station in Rome, plus I hadn't driven a stick shift in a while so it took me a few minutes how to get our Nissan Quaqhai in reverse and edge out of the tight parallel parking spot on the street and get into Rome traffic.  My fears over being overwhelmed by the busy traffic and seemingly lawless traffic circles proved to be unfounded and I called on my inner Mario Andretti and got into the rhythm of the driving and actually enjoyed following the GPS to get on the Autostrada and head north toward Siena.  We got there around 3:30, later than we planned because of the delay in the car rental process and traffic which was busy.  Siena is beautiful, with a gorgeous city center.

The square in the picture above is ringed by cafes and gellatorias, where we snacked and tried to warm up and dry out.  The highlight of Siena for us was the Duomo which impressed us more than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.  Both inside and out the artwork on the Duomo is stunning, from the Michaelangelo statue to the Pisano Pulpit.

Annie adds:  Siena is very much like San Franscisco, with the hills you are often climbing up and down.  The Duomo is much "busier" than what you see in other Duomos, and inside, the marble inlays on the floors were fantastic and took 200 years to build.  There are also ties to Pagan beginnings and their aversion to the papacy which also made the antagonist in me quite happy there.  We lit two candles for our family and friends at the altar in the church.  (Yes, Bill lit one of them!-so you either get extra special blessings or are potentially cursed.)

We stayed until dusk although Siena had much more to see.  We were cold and tired and anxious to get to San Gimignano.  Our hosts in this medieval town, Fabio and Sara couldn't be more helpful and amazing with their suggestions and recommendations.  SG is a walled town with very few cars permitted inside the walls.  It is famous for its towers which were built by the wealthiest, most important townspeople.   At the height of its power, there were 72 towers, where now only 14 remain.  The higher your tower, the more wealth and prestige you represented.  (I am thinking this was a guy's idea....just saying) 

We had beautiful views of the Chianti hills with sunny skies on Thursday.  That gave us a chance to walk around and find the punto panaramico.

After a lunch with the worst pizza we've had in Italy at a cafe with pictures of the food on the menu at the entrance which should have told us something, we searched out some inside activities to get out of the light rain that returned.  We made the questionable decision of going into a museum of torture.  How disturbing, with artifacts of a wide variety of methods of torture and execution, including an iron maiden and a guillotine and everything in between.  The human race has been extremely creative on how to impart pain and suffering on its own.  Annie was bothered the most by the museum, which was somewhat surprising considering how much time she spends watching those real-life medical shows were people have been impaled by a variety of foreign objects.  In an effort to erase all those gruesome injuries, we stopped at a museum that re-created SG when all 72 towers were standing, with a painstaking miniature version of the village.  Modern-day SG is quiet in November, which was charming but also a bit frustrating as dining options were limited so we went back to the same restaurant for the second straight night, Trattoria Chiribiri, which was a 27-seat cozy cafe, with hosts that spoke enough English to overcome our limited Italian and get another nice meal.