The last city we visited while we were still down in Tuscany, Siena was probably my favorite bigger city we visited in Italy. Here are some photos we took in the city, from the city of the surrounding area, and a couple we took that day when we got back to Radda at the end of the day.
Today’s photo installment comes from what might have been my favorite day from the honeymoon. When we talked about going to Italy for our honeymoon, this is what I was imagining. I already told you about the time we spent in these places and I’m finally posting the pictures from the day.
Some more shots from the honeymoon. These are a from the first two hill towns that we visited in the Tuscan countryside, Volterra and San Gimignano.
Finally getting around to putting up some more of our pictures from our honeymoon trip. We took these pictures around the little town we stayed in, Radda in Chianti, while we were in Tuscany. These will give you a good idea how incredible the area is and how amazing the view from our hotel room was.
Our time in Tuscany coming to an end (sad face), we made the drive from where we were staying in Radda in Chianti to Venice. The first several days of driving through Italy weren’t completely terrible, but I was definitely ready to be done with the car. I’d had enough of driving windy roads through mountains with crazy Italian drivers.
You don’t need a blow by blow of our drive, so here are a few little tidbits that I found interesting about driving on Italian freeways and in Italy in general.
Driving on small country roads in the mountains requires constant concentration and gets very tedious after a while. Driving on a freeway in the Italian mountains requires a completely different kind of concentration. It’s the kind that requires you to concentrate on the bends in the road while simultaneously not getting killed by the trucks that are required to go slower in the right lane and the BMW and Mercedes drivers in the left lane who take the speed limit as only a suggestion.
While we’re on the topic, the idea of a speed limit in Italy is funny. Even on the craziest curvy roads Italians were going well beyond the posted speed suggestion. You could always tell when there was a non-Italian tourist driving because we were the ones with the trail of cars backed up behind us. Thankfully, passing zones were only a suggestion as well, because I got passed all the time, even in the middle of turns.
Despite the inherent insanity in most Italian drivers, they surprised me as incredibly courteous whenever I needed to get over in their lane. They would often slow down to let me over; something unheard of on American roads.
Best rest stop food I ever had was in Italy. Yeah, that doesn’t really sound like much, but the sandwiches we had at the Jersey Turnpike-like fuel and food stop were better than sandwiches you would get at many delis in the US.
Well, my driving adventure in Italy is completed, for now. I say for now because I would go back to Tuscany in a heartbeat. Absolutely loved it. I definitely think their could be an anniversary trip to Tuscany in our future one day. I hope someone has a merit badge or an “I survived driving in Italy” t-shirt waiting for me back home.
Those of you that know me well know that I’m already back home from the honeymoon. Even though I didn’t have Internets access all the time, I kept what essentially equates to a travel journal most nights when we got back to the hotel. So everyone can share in our experiences while in Italy and Switzerland I’m going to continue posting my thoughts from the end of each day. This is the first of the rest of those posts.
Today was a little more simple than our previous days. We headed down to one of the other more well known cities in Tuscany, Siena. I had heard very positive things about Siena from friends before our trip, but I really didn’t know what to expect.
Getting to Siena was pretty easy, but figuring out where the parking lots were was kind of a pain. In Italy, you can generally can get directed to parking lots by following the blue “P” signs. The only problem is that the signs don’t always differentiate between a large lot and street parking reserved for residents of the neighborhood. Let’s just say the situation resulted in an unexpected tour of less interesting parts of Siena.
Once we got the parking situation sorted out, we set out into the city. While the visit was really enjoyable, there wasn’t a ton to go into in detail so I’ll just hit on a couple of the more interesting points.
We started with a visit to the home of and church dedicated to one of the many St. Catherines, this one living in Siena. The church was pretty huge with some really interesting chapel areas, but the most noteworthy (and sort of creepy) thing was the fact that they had St. Catherine’s mummified head in the church. We weren’t able to find the English language literature behind the story, but there it was. And she’s still revered there, as there was, what I assume was a local, praying fervently to her.
One of the guide books we’ve been using is the “Top 10” series where they tell you the top 10 things overall and in certain categories about a region or city your visiting. A couple of the overall top 10s for the Tuscany region were the piazza and duomo in Siena and I now know why. The piazza is a pretty simple open area, but it’s the biggest in Tuscany, maybe Italy and it’s a fantastic place to go hang out. Lots of merchants and restaurants around the outside edge. There’s also a really nice fountain that sits on one side for more viewing interest. Generally, it would be a cool place to go grab a quick bite or some gelato and hang and out and people watch.
The Duomo may have ascended to the most impressive church that we’ve seen on this trip. Its humongous and there is so much to look at that you have a hard time taking it all in. Really ornate alters, an amazing ceiling, a very unique set of columns that support the roof that is striped with different colored marble stones, and a series of 59 artistic tiles adorning the floor. I don’t really think I could do a suitable job of explaining it in words so I’ll post some pictures as soon as I can get them in shape to be posted.
Overall, the visit to Siena was a really nice one. The city is really interesting to look at as you wander through the narrow streets. The other major drawback besides the difficulties of parking is that the city is extremely hilly so if you visit, wear good shoes and be ready for the up and down.
Though the day didn’t turn out like we had anticipated, Cris and I agreed it was the best day of the trip so far. We set out looking for vineyards to tour and wines to taste. We ended up finding a bit more and a little less than we’d hoped.
First let me say that navigating the Tuscan countryside is not for the directionally challenged. Addresses aren’t exactly the easiest to come by for some of these sort of remote places and some maps are better than others.
So armed with two maps and a GPS we set off and promptly went in a directions we shouldn’t have gone in to try to find what we were looking for. We’re blaming that on the brochure that said the vineyard was in Gaiole when it wasn’t. So we drove to the town and found no winery, but we did find a local cycling race and a small wine shop that sold us a bottle of wine from the vineyard we were actually trying to find, but couldn’t. After watching the beginning of the bike race and buying some berries from a little produce stand in town we set off the find Castello Meleto.
We were told by the desk at our hotel that they give tours regularly on the weekends and that no reservation was needed. Shocker, women like to get married in old castles with amazing scenery as a backdrop. Little tip if you’re going to visit Meleto on a Saturday call ahead to see if anyone is getting married there that day. When we got they we were told the three o’clock tour we were planning to take was in doubt because they were dealing with a 200 person wedding. After sitting in their little shop for a while trying to plan our next move, much to our delight, the lady came back and told us they could squeeze us in for a very quick tour before they got really busy with the wedding.
The castle was small but interesting and had some beautiful artwork on the walls and ceilings. The most interesting aspect of the castle was that a theater was built into the complex which was really unusual for a medieval castle.
Beyond the building, they grounds and surrounding area were completely stunning. I will definitely post some pictures when we get back home, but if you had given me a glass of wine and a hammock, I may never have left. We also did a quick tasting of their wines and came away with a couple of bottles of their classic Chianti as part of the fee for the tour.
After leaving Meleto, we headed for a another castle not too far away for another tour and tasting. Castello Brolio has a couple claims to fame. It is the birthplace of classic chianti, and the count/owner of Brolio set the standards for the mix of grapes for chianti that is still used today. In my opinion, the most interesting fact about the castle is that since being purchased from an order of monks in the 1400s it has been with the same family, which still lives there today. Though the family still lives there, they allow self-guided tours around the walls, gardens, and family chapel. The chapel was small, but beautiful and had some incredible mosaics inside. The true highlight of Brolio was the view. The scenery from the walls of the castle may have been the most stunning I’ve seen. When I imagine Tuscany in my mind, the view from Brolio is what I pictured.
By the time we finished with the Brolio tour it was starting to get late in the day so we headed back towards our hotel. Earlier while at Meleto we figured out where the first vineyard we wanted to fine was and it happened to be on the way back to our home base, so we headed that direction. After a nice drive on Tuscany’s lovely winding roads, we came to the “driveway” for the vineyard. It was one of the unpaved roads we had been warned about by our hotel front desk. Imagine some of the most ridiculous climbs they make in the Tour de France and then make that road unpaved and rutted. The incline was ridiculous and it wound through a tiny, tiny hamlet on the side of a mountain. And then, when we get to the gate it was closed. And I don’t mean closed for the day closed. It looked like there was a chain on the gate that may not have been open for a little while. With nothing else to do, we precariously turned the car around and headed home.
Despite the small setback it was a really awesome day. We got to taste some great wine. We happened upon a few completely unexpected treasures. And we got to see some of the most amazing scenery I’ve ever come across. Exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for when we decided to come to Italy.
Our travels today took us to Volterra and San Gimignano. These two communities are small towns in the Tuscan countryside that were perched up on hills for defensive purposes. Being that they are hill towns, the views of the surrounding countryside are truly beautiful, but getting this view takes some work. From my perspective, the work is worth it.
They both are historic little towns with a rustic feel, though they in many ways survive on the tourism trade these days. Narrow brick streets wind through centuries old buildings, many of them containing artisan shops, tratorias, and gelatarias.
Volterra is famous for Etruscans and alabaster. The Etruscans were an ancient civilizations dating back to BC times and there have been some significant archeological discoveries near the town. You can also look down from the city walls at the ruins of an ancient Roman theater just outside the city. Cris quickly fell in love with the alabaster shops, especially when they had the alabaster lit up and glowing. Volterran artisans are famous for working the often white stone into vases, bowls and a variety of other items. As a memento of our visit we bought a small alabaster vase to remind us of our time there.
San Gimignano, also known as the “medieval Manhattan,” is more well known for the centuries old towers that make up its skyline. At one point it had over 70 towers and now fourteen still stand. One is still available to go up to the top to get an amazing view of the surrounding countryside. I also really enjoyed the two central squares in the town where a lot of the visitors mill about. One of the more, we’ll say, interesting parts of the trip was the torture museum. Neither Cris or I can figure out why she wanted to visit this museum except for some strange holdover from law school and confronting questions on the legalities of torture.
Possibly, one of my favorite parts about our visit there is the main church, which dates from the 11th century and most of the artwork dates from the 1400s. The artwork was my favorite part of the church. On the top section of one wall it told the story of the birth of Christ from the time the angels came to Mary to the adoration of the kings and shepherds. On the bottom section of the same wall, with the panels ordered in the opposite chronology, the story of the crucifixion was told from the last supper to the resurrection.
On the day I collected a significant number of photos and Cris made some serious progress in the postcard department.
