Siena and Monteriggioni!

Ciao!

Up this morning about 6, and this time, it was actually raining a bit!  Not hard, but fairly steady for a time.  In fact, when I looked out our balcony, there was actually some blue sky and sunshine – and still it rained!  Made me think of Hawaii and “liquid sunshine!”  (Miss you, Dan and Kevin!)  We decided that we would head to Siena to the museum, and avoid any outdoor sites if possible, to stay dry.

Entering Siena at Porto Roma

Clock tower in central piazza

Central piazza ... with people!

This is dripping chocolate...

Siena Duomo

Museum ceiling

My only Etruscan artifact for today!

Love the carved pillars!

Walls of Monteriggioni!

Monteriggioni's only piazza!

Looking out the back gate

Beautiful on the hill!

Lunch!

Breasola salad!

My eggs with asparagus

R's Tortolini with eggplant

Last night I did a load of laundry here in the apartment, and when it was finished and I was putting everything out on the drying rack, I noticed that one of R’s white T-shirts had been stained by something mysterious! Lots of dark yellow dot-like stains across the arm and into the main body of the T-shirt.  No idea at all where it came from, as everything else was fine.  The only difficulty is that losing a t-shirt (because I don’t want him to wear it in its present condition) can be tough when you’re not carrying a lot of clothes. So, I suggested to Robert that this morning we stop at Upim as we’re leaving town.  Upim is an Italian department store, associated with the Conad grocery stores.  We’ve never been in one before, and have no idea what to expect, but I was hoping we could possibly pick up a plain T-shirt or two for Robert to have.  So, that was our first stop.  We were able to find a navy and a black T-shirt for him to wear; very plain, but nice cotton.  And, I hate to admit this, while we were there, a few extra T-shirts for me also fell into the basket…oh well!  

Then, out on the road to Siena.  We ended up taking the autostrada for part of the way there.  We had been in Siena three times before, I believe, but this time approached it from the Porta Roma gate.  Happy to report that we had left the rain behind in Montepulciano.  We were able to find parking outside for once (always in years past, we parked in an underground garage, which was always a bit scary!) which was within 10 minutes of walking to the central piazza and the Duomo.  Lots of tourists milling around in the center of town, and of course we managed to forget our umbrellas in the car … Found the Duomo and were directed to the Museo Archaeologico, across the piazza.

Well…I know we didn’t rate Cortona’s Etruscan museum very highly because there were so many “faux” things in it.  This time, seriously, the museum was a mess.  It has been years (probably 15 or so) since we last visited, and to say things have changed is indeed an understatement.  It seems like there was a combination of Palazzo, old hospital and archaeological museum combined in one place.  There were definitely other things going on there too, but those are the ones we recognized.  To me, it felt like the curator had way too much money to spend, so it was used to create rather contemporary effects – they had a lot of 3-D visuals projected on walls and ceilings, and lots of sounds coming from disjointed places.  The archaeological collection was housed, quite literally, in the basement, and wound around and between posts and walls, with very little explanation of what was being displayed.  They had free audiophones, which were supposed to go off when you were in certain sections to provide you with commentary, but sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t.  All in all, a very disjointed and jumbled affair.  Not interesting in the least, I am sorry to report.

So, abandoned the museum and headed out into the square.  This was about the time that we realized that we had left our umbrellas safely warm and dry in the back seat of the car – and it did look like rain! Fortunately, we were able to make it back to the car before it got too bad – just lots of big sprinkles.

From there, we drove to Monteriggioni, which is one of our favorite Tuscan places. It is a very small town, with one hotel and one really good restaurant.  However, unlike the first times we visited there, there are now several smaller restaurants, as well as numerous wine tasting venues, shoe stores and tourist shops.  Lots of people there already, and we debated going to Il Pozzo, the one good restaurant where we have eaten in the past. However, as it was about an hour and 15 minutes drive back to Montepulciano, we decided against eating there and headed back to the apartment instead. Got here about 2:15, and the weather was lovely – all those big, fluffy white clouds and lots of sunshine. Dropped our coats and books, and decided to go back to Piazza San Francisco to our Enoteca/Bistrot.  As Robert commented, why in Tuscany does it always seem like you are walking uphill?  Well, in this case, we were …

Got our “usual” table inside and started with two glasses of Prosecco; then ordered lunch.  And, as we were starting to eat, in came the astronomer we met the other day in Chiusi – he and his wife are on a photo tour, and were in Montepulciano for the afternoon!  Strange how that works!  Allen told us they had been getting up and meeting in the 4:15 – 5:15 am time frames, to get the good morning light – got us to thinking about Katy and Bob Zappala and their birding tours – seems like they are always out early as well!  So happy we can at least sleep in until 6-ish!

Robert started with the bresaola salad with arugula and parmesan cheese, and followed that with the tortelloni stuffed with eggplant with a diced tomato and diced cheese sauce.  I started with two sunny side up eggs with asparagus and truffles, followed by the bresaola salad.  Everything was yummy!

We’ve decided that tomorrow we’re going to explore Montepulciano and possibly do some wine tasting.  As Robert says, if he never sees another Etruscan sarcophagus again, he will be fine with that!  I do have to admit that we have seen a lot of them these past couple of weeks…It will definitely be fun to take a day off and see how it goes!

More later!

m

xxx