Siena and environs

Tomorrow we take off in a rented car for 5 days to explore the regions west of Avignon, the Camargue, and then north of Arles, and then we’ll return to this beautiful village of Saignon (which, if I haven’t yet explained, is just a few kilometers—up—from Apt, in Provence).

I don’t seem to have found time to explain what we’ve been up to lately, but if you’d like to follow along on a map, here’s a not-so-brief summary of our peregrinations before arriving in Provence on the 25th.

After Venice we trained and bused our way to Siena, bypassing Florence because we were city’ed out. Someday I’ll have to come back to see Florence. Siena is a beautiful town, even on cold gray days, which these were. The grand old houses tower several stories overhead; their imposing front doors (like those in Venice, fronted by mammoth and grimacing doorknockers) open right onto the twisty, tilted old streets—there isn’t anything like a front yard or even a stoop. Thus the general feeling, at least in the heart of the old town where all the famous things are, is of being surrounded by stone. The buildings are all the same tawny gray color of the rock and stucco, and often tinged with the sooty gray that comes from car exhaust. (Only locals are allowed to drive on the inner city streets. The streets are medievally narrow and angled, basically looking to me like pedestrian passages, but local cars share the path with walkers, appearing abruptly from arched doorways and around sharp corners, and people scoot up against the walls or into shop doorways to let them pass, without breaking stride. I was surprised not to find anyone smooshed against the walls, like Flat Stanley.) It was pretty cold—I wore all my layers, including hat and scarf (same as in Venice). People had just begun putting out a few potted geraniums and cyclamen on their deep windowsills, so there were occasional spots of pink and red and green.

One day we took a bus to the nearby town of San Gimignano (‘jiminyano”), a medieval walled hilltop town famous for its towers. Everybody who was anybody in the middle ages in S. Gimignano built themselves a tower. (Or, more probably, made someone else build them a tower.) They served as defensive lookouts, of course, but could any town really need 73 towers for defense? That’s how many the guidebook claimed they had at their peak of the mine-is-bigger tower race. I don’t think they even have 73 houses in town. Now they are down to something like 14 towers, still giving the place a fetching bristly look. The main thing I will remember from San Gimignano is the look on Val’s face when we walked into the church and came face to fresco with the outstandingly kinky 14th century depiction of the Last Judgment. Each of the Seven Deadlies is portrayed on the church wall in all the forbidding perversity the artist could muster. Demons cavort with naked and miserable sinners, even seeming to feed the poor dears nothing but Italian panini (dry sandwiches) at a little round table. It was shortly after S. Gimignano that our binoculars went missing, but at least we made good use of them there.

We also had our first really notably scrumptious Italian meal in Siena. We arrived on a Sunday, when everything, but everything, is shut down, so our meal prospects were dismal that night. But on Monday we ate in a little, cave-like restaurant called Castelvechhio (old castle) and had super veggie spreads on toast, and risotto, and, um, other delightful things it turns out I can't remember.

Before leaving Siena we made sure to admire the ins and outs of the Duomo, the cathedral, which has famously striped towers like monuments in homage to Pippi Longstocking’s socks. It also has jaw-dropping scenes in inlaid marble all over the floor, more black-and-white striped marble columns, and marble of all colors generally in liberal supply. Best of all was the library, a small room with fantastically detailed medieval frescoes still in Crayola colors, and enormous parchment choral books with illuminations replete with miniature flowering beasts and ravening trees and other whimsical whatnot. I wanted to lie on the floor the better to gape at the ceiling frescoes but would have been trampled by the fleet of German tourists briskly circling the room.

From Siena we planned to take the train to Pisa and thence to Cinque Terra on the coast. But it turns out that when the man at the ticket window crosses his arms with his hands on his shoulders and shakes vigorously, he is not telling you that you w ill be cold while waiting for the train on a stone bench in the Italian hail (although you will be). What he is telling you, in a presumably international gesture you may never have needed to know, is that the trains are on strike. But they are only on strike until 15.37 (3:37). Really? Yes, it is an itty-bitty strike, a little appetizer (as it turned out a couple days later) just making the point that they could wreak some serious havoc if they chose. It was ten minutes to one and we already had our backpacks and picnic lunches with us, so there wasn’t much for it but to sit on the cold bench by the train tracks, huddle together, listen to the occasional unintelligible Vogon announcement over the loudspeaker, nibble pannini, and wait until 3:37, when the strike ended on schedule and we were able to catch a train to Pisa.

We were only in Pisa the one evening, so although we knew the monuments were closed, we took the stinky diesel-fumey city bus to the famous Duomo and observed the leaning tower in the dark. Yep, it leans. Very peculiar. I was sorry we didn’t get to climb it. I really liked the baptistey, an enormous domey building festooned top to bottom with colonnades of columns (just like the church and tower) and looking somewhat like a very fussy, lacey tea cozy, or maybe a summer bonnet. We spent the night in a women’s (Catholic) hostel with very firm beds and lots of jams and Nutella at breakfast.

The next morning we caught a train to the southernmost town of the Cinque Terra (5 villages), Riomaggioro. I’ll have to tell you about these pretty little towns next time, and about the lemon trees and the campo santo in the castle....

Missing spring weather but otherwise having a fantastic time hiking the gorgeous countryside around Apt and Saignon...