Vacay, part 2 - We are Sienese, if you please

Before I get started about Siena, a few things to note about Rome. We had a great time there, but it turned out to be the least favorite of the five cities we visited. Not by a landslide, though. The other four were just tied for first place, with Rome coming in a close second. It's definitely a city, with more litter than we expected and definitely had a faster vibe to it. Not to say that we're not used to that with our big city life here in Los Angeles, but as we continued our adventures we realized that everything else beat out Rome in ambiance, people, etc.

Oh, and I uploaded all our Rome photos. You can see them here. I added more observations about our trip throughout in captions.

On with Siena!

Thursday, Sept. 27
We set out on a train from Rome to Siena, a Tuscan town. Brent noted that the countryside in between the two cities look much like the area where we went to college in Central California, which is also big on wineries because of the perfect climate. Well, it looked the same with a little Tuscan villa thrown in now and then.

We arrived at our hotel, called Hotel Alex. Our room at the tiny bed and breakfast had tile floors (apparently a lot of hotels do this to make it easier to keep the floors clean). It was sparse, but clean, which was fine as we were just going to spend one night there.

We strolled through Siena, a tiny medieval town. It's like a step back in time.

On our way through town, we stopped to pick up some margaherita pizza. Delicious!

We arrived at the town's main square, called Il Centro. Oh, and it also happens to be the origin of the color known as "Burnt Siena." Cool, huh? (See it in the background behind us.)

It started to rain, so we stepped into some shops above the square. Brent's highlight? Stumbling upon a butcher, complete with hanging meats in the window. Apparently it's quite the popular hangout. He had signs everywhere that said, "No photos allowed!" and he yelled at someone who tried to snap a photo. Brent was able to get one from outside without a hassle.

In another shop, we found panforte, a decadant fruit cake-ish treat. So good! (I'm munching on some now.) We also discovered traditional sienese cookies called ricciarelli.

After finding our treats, we walked through the rain to Siena's Duomo (Italian for "church). It's beautiful and ornate. We didn't want to pay the admission fee to enter, so we just admired it from afar.

We went back to our hotel and napped (I was starting to feel ill with a cold). That night after we rested we walked through the heavy rain, snuggled under our umbrella, to our dinner reservation at Al Marsili.

We had barely scored a reservation, but apparently no one wanted to battle the rain to get there so the restaurant was virtually empty. And the owners looked sad. Hopefully we made them feel better with our extensive meal. It sure made us feel good.

Brent started with bruschetta. And I had the most amazing dish ever called Pappa al Pomodoro. Freakin' amazing! It was so delicious that after we went on and on about it during our recap to my in-laws, my fabulous mother-in-law whipped some up for us today! We had it for dinner tonight!

Brent's second dish was gnocci with pesto, then he finished it off with rabbit. All so great! My second dish was raviolli with chunks of cheese. So yummy!
We topped it off with strawberry gelato. It was one of our favorite meals of the trip!

We ended the night with a rainless stroll back to our hotel. The clouds and the clear air and, hey, we were in Italy for God's sake, made it all so amazing.

More Siena pictures here.

Next up: Florence!

"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." - Orson Welles